A Bornean Banded Pitta (Hydrornis schwaneri) has been standing in front of the hiding place in a shady area of the forest already for a while. The Borneo Banded Pitta skillfully catches the delicacies – mealworms – that our guide has scattered. Suddenly an insect, an ant or a termite, can be seen beautifully on the beak of the Borneo Banded Pitta. At first I think that the insect doesn’t bother the Pitta at all, especially since the beak is made of horn and probably doesn’t pass on the slight pressure from above as a message to the brain. Nevertheless, the Bornean Banded Pitta quickly becomes dissatisfied with its “guest”. At first the birrd just shakes its head in annoyance. But the insect is surprisingly stubborn and stays on its beak, even moving further and further towards the base of its beak. A second attempt to shake off the annoying visitor also fails. Finally, the Borneo Banded Pitta shakes so violently and for a long time that no insect can actually be seen on its beak any more.
This Pitta is generally widespread, but sometimes only locally distributed. The Bornean Banded Pitta seems to prefer forests of the plant genus Dipterocarpaceae in hilly and lowland areas. It is more common there and prefers drier ridge areas and deeper mountain forests. But she avoids exotic tree plantations. The main distribution area is above 650 m to approx. 1,680 m above sea level.
The Bornean Banded Pitta was until recently treated as a conspecific of Hydrornis guajanus and Hydrornis irena, but was recently taxonomically split off. It differs from the Javan Banded Pitta (Hydrornis guajanus) in its yellow or white neck in males, the absence or presence of a dark blue chest band, a dark brown crown with a yellow stripe over its eyes, and its smaller size.
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