Black-crowned pitta
species of bird
The black-crowned pitta (Erythropitta ussheri), also known as the black-headed pitta, black-and-crimson pitta, black-and-scarlet pitta or black-crowned garnet pitta, is a brightly coloured, ground-dwelling, bird species in the pitta family Pittidae. It is endemic to the Southeast Asian island of Borneo.
Taxonomy
The black-crowned pitta was formally described in 1877 by the English ornithologist John Gould based on specimens that had been collected near the Lawas River in northern Borneo and sent to London by the British colonial administrator Herbert Taylor Ussher. Gould used the binomial name Pitta ussheri with the specific epithet chosen to honour Ussher who had supplied the specimens. The English ornithologist Richard Bowdler Sharpe published a description later in the same year. The black-crowned pitta is now one of 13 species placed in the genus Erythropitta that was introduced in 1854 by the French naturalist Charles Lucien Bonaparte. The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.
The pitta was formerly considered a subspecies of the garnet pitta (Erythropitta granatina) but was split because of morphological and vocal differences as well as apparent parapatry. Lack of evidence of hybridisation suggests that the garnet and black-headed pittas are allospecies.
Description
The birds grow to a length of 13–15.5 cm (5.1–6.1 in) and a weight of 50–64 g (1.8–2.3 oz).
“Black-crowned pitta” enters the record as species of bird. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Black-crowned, pitta and species can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 29, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q2927270. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1877 and 1854.
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This entry incorporates text from “Black-crowned pitta” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.