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Smooth-billed Ani | Crotophaga ani
Kleine ani | Garrapatero piquiliso
The Smooth-billed Ani is one of the best-known birds of the Caribbean: a scruffy-looking black cuckoo with a long, loosely attached tail and a high, humped bill that moves through pastures, roadsides and gardens in noisy groups. It is common in the Greater Antilles, the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands, and also occurs in Trinidad and Tobago and part of the Lesser Antilles. In Cuba and the Dominican Republic it is called judío; the Spanish name garrapatero refers to the ticks it sometimes picks off livestock.
Voice
The usual call is a plaintive, rising, rather whining oo-leek, repeated one after another by the members of a group in flight and on landing. While foraging the birds keep in touch with soft clucking and grunting notes. At danger, such as a hawk or a cat, the group switches to a harsh, rattling alarm.
Recording: José María Loaiza B. — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
30–36 cm, about half of it tail. Entirely dull black, in good light with a bronze or purple gloss and fine scaling on head, neck and mantle. The bill is black, very deep and laterally compressed, with a smooth, high hump on the upper mandible that rises above the line of the crown; there are no grooves. The eye is dark. The wings are short and rounded, the tail long, narrow and loosely attached; it bobs on landing and often hangs down at an angle. The flight is weak: a few quick flaps alternating with glides, low from bush to bush, the birds of a group often following one another. The sexes are alike; young birds are duller black and have a smaller bill without the high hump.
Confusion species
Groove-billed Ani Crotophaga sulcirostris, in the region the ani of Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire, is slightly smaller, has an evenly curved bill without a high hump and with three or four grooves on the side, and gives a two-syllable tee-ho; young Smooth-billed Anis with a still low bill are best told by call. Greater Ani Crotophaga major of Trinidad is much larger, glossed blue and has a pale eye. Carib Grackle Quiscalus lugubris and Shiny Cowbird Molothrus bonariensis have a pointed, thin or conical bill, a shorter tail and a much neater outline.
Habitat
Open and semi-open country with scattered bushes and trees: pastures, savanna, field edges and cane fields, roadsides, waste ground, gardens and village edges, also coastal scrub and the edges of mangroves and marshes; mainly in the lowlands, locally higher. Groups forage on the ground and low in vegetation, often with grazing cattle, taking grasshoppers and other large insects flushed by the animals, as well as spiders, lizards, frogs and some fruit and seeds. Occasionally it picks ticks and other parasites off livestock. Groups roost huddled together on a branch. The nest is a large cup of twigs in a dense bush or tree, built and used by several pairs together; the females lay in the same nest, which can hold up to nearly thirty eggs, and all group members incubate and feed the young.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
In the region common in Cuba, including the Isla de la Juventud, in Jamaica, Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, in the Bahamas, the Turks and Caicos Islands and the Cayman Islands, and on San Andrés. Also in the Virgin Islands and part of the Lesser Antilles, including St Kitts, Montserrat, Guadeloupe, Dominica, St Vincent and Grenada, not equally common on every island, and in Trinidad and Tobago. On Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire, the range of Groove-billed Ani, there are only a few reports. Outside the region in southern Florida, southern Central America and much of South America to northern Argentina; it was introduced to the Galápagos Islands around the 1960s.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Almost anywhere in open lowland country, especially in pastures with cattle and along roadsides; small groups often sit in plain view on fences, bushes and wires. The plaintive oo-leek as a group takes off gives the species away even when the birds are out of sight.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The species benefits from forest clearance and cattle ranching and is common on most islands. In southern Florida, at the edge of its range, it has declined sharply.
Scientific name
Crotophaga ani | Linnaeus, 1758
Linnaeus described the species in 1758 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. He introduced the genus Crotophaga in that same work. Crotophaga is Greek, from krotōn 'tick' and -phagos '-eating': 'tick-eater', as anis were thought to feed on ticks. ani comes from the Tupí name Anim for this bird ('social bird'; compare Guaraní Anó). The specimen the first description was based on came from Jamaica.