Follow Your Nose

Bird of the Day Series, Social Media Content

This is the Eurasian Hoopoe, so called because his call is oop-oop-oop. This foot-long bird gets around—Spain has the largest population, but they’re all over India and one was once found at 20,000 feet on Mount Everest.

Photo: Jamie MacArthur

These birds have a long-held mystical aura. They were sacred to Persians, Minoans and Egyptians; in 414 BC, they were featured in a play by Aristophanes called The Birds. The Hoopoe is the official mascot of the University of Johannesburg, and he’s on the coats of arms of various German cities. The Torah dictates that they should not be eaten and, in 2008, the Hoopoe became the national bird of Israel.  On the other hand, Scandinavians see them as harbingers of danger. In Estonia, they’re connected with death and the underworld. Then again, vintners believe that their presence foreshadows an excellent vintage; curiously, they are bountiful on the lawns of English vicars. 

When mating, the males fight viciously over females, often losing eyes in the process. Then, while the males stay clean with dust and sand baths, nesting females exude a liquid that smells like rotting meat. Then so do the chicks. If you happen upon a nest, mother and babies hiss like snakes and shoot streams of faeces. And the nest is never cleaned, so it reeks. On the upside, that makes them easy to find.

This bird usually eats bugs, and doesn’t care about size—if he finds something large, he’ll paralyze it by jabbing it in the neck, then kill it by beating it on the head with a stone. Because they eat tons of locusts and predatory moths, Hoopoes are protected in most countries.

The sad exception is Morocco, where the government refuses to outlaw the live trade of any bird. People want to own them because they're pretty; the lore makes the ignorant think that using them in medicine will be of some benefit. So this bird, which is often smuggled from Spain and Portugal, can be purchased anywhere in Morocco. If you want to write to the Moroccan Trade Ministry about this, you can do so here: https://www.mcinet.gov.ma/en