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Eurasian Hoopoe — printable fact sheet
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Eurasian Hoopoe
Upupa epops
Upupa epops is a pinkish, black-and-white barred bird with a fan of a crest and a long curved bill, and it defends its nest with chemical warfare. The female and her nestlings have a preen gland that switches, during breeding, to producing a dark brown fluid that smells powerful…
Did you know?
- The Eurasian Hoopoe was once considered sacred in Ancient Egypt and is frequently depicted in ancient art and hieroglyphs.
- The bacteria in the hoopoe's preen gland belong mainly to the genus Enterococcus and produce bacteriocins — the bird is effectively farming its own antibiotics. The hoopoe is the national bird of Israel, chosen by public vote in 2008. Its name in almost every language is an imitation of its call, a soft, far-carrying "oop-oop-oop" — hoopoe, houppe, hudhud, upupa. It appears in the Quran as the messenger of Solomon and in Aristophanes' The Birds as the transformed king Tereus, giving it one of the longest continuous literary careers of any bird.
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