Colours of Wildlife: Great Blue Turaco
Created | Updated Jan 26, 2014
Great Blue Turaco
Willem is a wildlife artist based in South Africa. He says "My aim is simply to express the beauty and wonder that is in Nature, and to heighten people's appreciation of plants, animals and the wilderness. Not everything I paint is African! Though I've never been there, I'm also fascinated by Asia and I've done paintings of Asian rhinos and birds as well. I may in future do some of European, Australian and American species too. I'm fascinated by wild things from all over the world! I mainly paint in watercolours. . . but actually many media including 'digital' paintings with the computer!"
This is another bird that doesn’t occur in South Africa … but I really wish it did! It is a Great Blue Turaco, Corythaeola cristata. Like the Grey Go-Away Bird, the Purplecrested Turaco, the Knysna Turaco and the Violet Turaco, this is a member of the Turaco Family. Since I already wrote a lot about the family in those entries, I will not say much more here. Only that I hope you're not getting tired of turacos! I never would … I love them and want to feature all the species that occur in Africa … which is to say, all the species in the world, since they only occur on this continent!
The great blue turaco is the largest member of the family. While the other species range in length from about 40 cm/16" to 50 cm/20", the great blue turaco reaches 75 cm/30" in length. It also can weigh over 1 kg/2.2 lbs. If turacos are included in the cuckoo order, the Cuculiformes, then the great blue turaco would be the largest member of that order as well. Its distribution is centered on the rainforest belt in central and western-equatorial Africa, with outlying populations in South Sudan, Kenya and Angola. It occurs mainly in tropical lowland rainforest, but also ventures into neighbouring woodlands, especially trees fringing rivers, and mountain forests. It is adaptable enough to also occur in disturbed and regenerating forest. Its overall range is huge, larger than that of any other turaco species … only, it doesn't make it into South Africa! The closest it gets, is Angola and the southern DRC.
Although the great blue turaco seems to fit with the other forest turacos, there are some differences. The regular forest turacos fall into two well-defined groups: those with mainly greenish plumage, like the Knysna and Purplecrested turacos, and those with dark violet-bluish plumage like the Violet Turaco. Both those groups have brilliant crimson wing feathers, the colour coming from a special copper-based pigment that is characteristic of the family. Both groups of the smaller turacos also have a unique green pigment, which in the violet ones is masked by other pigments. The great blue turaco does not have the vivid red wing feathers, and is blue, yellow, reddish brown and black in its feather coloration, lacking the green as well. But it is clearly a turaco, as shown by its shape, with its long tail, feather crest, and stout bill. The bill is bright yellow with a 'helmet'-like, broad, expanded base, and is bright red towards the tips, as if the bird was wearing lipstick! Like the other turacos, it is a fruit eater, occasionally also eating leaves, flowers, buds and shoots.
The call of the great blue turaco is also similar to those of the other forest species, a guttural cawing, sometimes preceded by a bubbling trill. These loud calls resound through the forest and help the turacos maintain their territories. In the mating season, the males and females display to each other by raising their crests, showing off their bills, and fanning their tails to display the bold black-and-yellow patterns. They will chase each other, and will bring food for each other to show that they can be good providers. Both sexes build the nest, a platform of sticks. The female usually lays a clutch of two eggs, and both parents incubate them and feed the chicks after they hatch. The chicks remain close to their parents after they fledge, since this is a social species that lives and feeds in small, family-based flocks.
This spectacular species is not threatened, and is also present in many zoos and bird collections around the world. Like other turacos it has a peaceful and friendly temperament and becomes very tame in captivity.
