Typical pitta with prominent sky-blue wing-coverts. Bright green upperparts, warm buff underparts. Black mask encircles face and variably across forehead.
Vulnerable
Typical pitta with prominent sky-blue wing-coverts. Bright green upperparts, warm buff under parts. Black mask encircles face and variably across forehead.
No other pitta is known from the range but vagrant Hooded Pitta P. sordida and Noisy Pitta P. versicolor are possible.
15 cm
Taxonomy: Possibly forms a superspecies with P. elegans, P. versicolor and P. iris. Three subspecies recognized. pallida Rothschild, 1904 - Bougainville (N Solomons). nigrifrons Mayr, 1935 - Choiseul (C Solomons). anerythra Rothschild, 1901 - Santa Isabel (C Solomons). (source: Handbook of the Birds of World)
Subspecies and Distribution:
- pallida Rothschild, 1904 - Bougainville (N Solomons).
- nigrifrons Mayr, 1935 - Choiseul (C Solomons).
- anerythra Rothschild, 1901 - Santa Isabel (C Solomons).
- nigrifrons Mayr, 1935 - Choiseul (C Solomons).
At Tirotonga, it is found in primary forest, and also small forest remnants and regrowth thickets within a patchwork of gardens between 400-600 m. Here it is more common in the secondary thickets of the gardened areas and less common in large tracts of primary forest. Two nests found in 1998 were in tiny fragments of closed-canopy forest next to gardens and thickets, one in 1999 was in primary forest. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Whitney expeditions found this species in forested mountain valleys and coastal and alluvial plain.
Insects of many kinds, e.g. beetles, ants, termites (Isoptera), Orthoptera, cockroaches (Blattodea), bugs (Hemiptera), various larvae; also earthworms and snails, and once a leaf found in a stomach. forages on forest floor among dead leaves, often two birds feeding 5 . 30 m apart; probes among litter, flicks and scrapes aside leaves.
It was formerly reasonably common, at least on Bougainville, where 40 specimens were collected before 1938.