Coracias
genus of birds
Coracias is a genus of the rollers, an Old World family of birds related to the kingfishers and bee-eaters. They share the colourful appearance of those groups, blues and browns predominating. The two outer front toes are connected, but not the inner one.
Taxonomy
The genus Coracias was introduced in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae. The genus name is from Ancient Greek korakías (κορακίας), derived from korax (κόραξ, ‘raven, crow’). Aristotle described the coracias as a bird as big as a crow with a red beak, which some believe to be the chough. The type species was designated as the European roller (Coracias garrulus) by George Robert Gray in 1855.
The phylogenetic relationships among the Coracias species are shown below, from the molecular study by Johansson et al. (2018)
Species
Nine species are recognized:
Fossil species
†Coracias chauvireae (Early Pleistocene of Crimea)
Former species
Formerly, some authorities also considered the following species (or subspecies) as species within the genus Coracias:
Olive-backed oriole (as Coracias sagittata)
Eurasian golden oriole (as Coracias oriolus)
Black-hooded oriole (as Coracias xanthornus)
Broad-billed roller (as Coracias glaucurus)
Broad-billed roller (afer) (as Coracias afra)
Oriental dollarbird (as Coracias orientalis)
Australian roller (as Coracias pacifica)
Behaviour and ecology
Coracias rollers are watch-and wait hunters. They sit in a tree or on a post before descending on their prey and carrying it back in the beak to a perch before dismembering it.
The public source identifies “Coracias” as genus of birds. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Coracias, genus and birds.
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A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Coracias”, the useful work is to connect “genus of birds” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q44617. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1758, 1855 and 2018.
Scientific names, classifications and consensus can change while older terminology persists in catalogues and historical literature. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Coracias” 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.