Guinea Turaco

• Its green is a real pigment called turacoverdin, with copper in the molecule, and it is the only true green pigment in the bird kingdom: in every other species green is an optical effect of the structure of the feather.
• Its red, turacin, also contains copper and is soluble in alkaline water: a wet feather can turn the water pink, something that baffled nineteenth-century naturalists.
• It moves through the canopy by running and leaping between branches rather than by flying, thanks to a fourth toe that it can rotate forwards or backwards as required.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (bird)

Habitat and environment

Rainforest, gallery forest and secondary forest of West Africa

Birth weight

Altricial: born blind, naked or with sparse down and entirely dependent

Size at birth

Altricial: born blind, naked or with sparse down and entirely dependent

Sexual maturity

2 years

Gestation / incubation

23 days of incubation

Litter / clutch size

2 eggs

Sources consulted: Wikipedia (es): Tauraco persa

Best time: All year round in the forests of West Africa, by day; it is detected by its deep call and by the intense red it shows when it opens its wings.

The pins mark the parks where its presence is documented.