ANATOMY OF BIRDS
GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION
MIGRATIONS OF BIRDS
CLASSIFICATION OF BIRDS
LIZARD-TAILED BIRD
AMERICAN TOOTHED-BIRDS
THE OSTRICHES
THE RHEAS
EMEUS AND CASSOWARIES
THE TINAMOUS
THE KIWIS
THE PENGUINS
LOONS AND GREBES
ALBATROSSES & PETRELS
STORK-LIKE BIRDS
GOOSE-LIKE BIRDS
FALCON-LIKE BIRDS
FOWL-LIKE BIRDS
CRANE-LIKE BIRDS
PLOVER-LIKE BIRDS
CUCKOO-LIKE BIRDS
THE ROLLER-LIKE BIRDS
SPARROW-LIKE BIRDS
Birds and Birding's Guide to:
Watching THE ROLLER-LIKE BIRDS
(Order Coraciiformes)
The Roller-like birds constitute a very large and much diversified order of birds most closely related to the Cuckoo-like birds (Cucu-liformes) on the one hand, and to the Sparrow-like birds (Passeri-formes) on the other.
They are mainly of arboreal habits and have the young born blind and helpless, are as a group strictly cosmopolitan in distribution, and in a majority of cases nest in holes and lay white eggs. Without going extensively into the structural characters, it may be stated that they have comparatively short legs, generally the bridge (desmognathous) form of palate, and the slit-like (holorhinal) form of nostrils, while the ambiens muscle is always absent, and the basipterygoid processes at the base of the skull either absent or rudimentary.
The cervical vertebrae are thirteen, fourteen, or fifteen in number. The Coraciiformes contains seven suborders; the Coracix, Striges, Capri-mulgi, Cypseli, Colii, Trogones, and Pici, and a large number of families and subfamilies. The characters of each group will be set forth under the respective headings.
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