African Pitta

African Pitta

We are delighted that Josef Küpper Söhne GmbH has taken over the sponsorship of the pitta pair (Pitta angolensis).

The often colourfully feathered pittas (family: Pittidae) are sometimes referred to as the "jewels of the rainforest" and delight numerous enthusiasts and ornithologists as "one of the most beautiful bird families in the world".
The small, stubby-tailed birds are typical forest floor dwellers that spend their days hidden in undergrowth-rich rainforests, mangrove stands or bamboo thickets. However, they spend the night high up in the trees.

Most of the 30 pitta species originate from South-East Asia, but two species of this bird family are also found in Africa. The Angolan or African pitta inhabits rainforests and other types of forest in several, non-contiguous distribution areas from Guinea in the west to Angola, Uganda in the east and Mozambique in the south-east of the African continent.

The birds only live together as a pair during the mating season - the rest of the year they are solitary birds. They search for their food - a wide variety of insects, arachnids and worms - in "thrush manner": they stand motionless for minutes in the leaf litter on the forest floor before suddenly pouncing on their prey or, if they don't find what they are looking for, they take long hops from a standing position to find another spot.