Acacia Pied Barbet

About the Acacia Pied Barbet

The acacia pied barbet or pied barbet (Tricholaema leucomelas) is a species of bird in the family Lybiidae which is native to southern Africa. The acacia pied barbet was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1780 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux from a specimen collected from the Cape of Good Hope region of South Africa. The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text. Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Bucco leucomelas in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées. The acacia pied barbet is now placed in the genus Tricholaema that was introduced by the French brothers Jules and Édouard Verreaux in 1855. The generic name combines the Ancient Greek thrix meaning hair and laimos meaning "throat". The specific leucomelas combines the Ancient Greek leukos meaning "white" and melas meaning "black".

Three subspecies are recognised: T. l... Wikipedia →