page_title: White-necked rockfowl
section_title: Diet
hierarchical_section_title: White-necked rockfowl / Ecology and behavior / Diet
caption_attribution_description: Some safari ant soldiers make tunnels to provide a safe route for the workers. Photo taken on the Chogoria of Mount Kenya.
context_page_description: The white-necked rockfowl is a medium-sized bird in the family Picathartidae, with a long neck and tail. Also known as the white-necked picathartes, this passerine is mainly found in rocky forested areas at higher altitudes in West Africa from Guinea to Ghana. Its distribution is patchy, with populations often being isolated from each other. The rockfowl typically chooses to live near streams and inselbergs. It has no recognized subspecies, though some believe that it forms a superspecies with the grey-necked rockfowl. The white-necked rockfowl has greyish-black upperparts and white underparts. Its unusually long, dark brown tail is used for balance, and its thighs are muscular. The head is nearly featherless, with the exposed skin being bright yellow except for two large, circular black patches located just behind the eyes. Though the bird is usually silent, some calls are known.
  These rockfowl feed primarily on insects, though parents feed small frogs to their young. One feeding strategy involves following Dorylus army ant swarms, feeding on insects flushed by the ants.
context_section_description: The white-necked rockfowl forages across slopes on mossy, creeper-covered boulders and in trees covered in lianas and hanging mosses. It occasionally forages by hopping across sand by a stream or even in the stream, as evidenced by crab remains in the rockfowl's droppings. While foraging on the ground, the rockfowl picks up leaves with its bill and tosses them aside. It feeds in mixed-species groups ahead of swarms of Dorylus ants with alethes, bristlebills, and Finsch's rufous thrushes, picking off insects flushed by the ants, mostly off the ground. The rockfowl has also been observed hopping from the ground and snatching prey midair.
  The diet is diverse and generalized, enabling the white-necked rockfowl to have a degree of adaptability in collecting food. This rockfowl primarily eats insects, including larval cockroaches, tettigoniid grasshoppers, earwigs, ants from the genera Pachycondyla and Dorylus, click beetles from the genus Psephus, and termites. Other than insects, it has been observed eating millipedes, centipedes, snails, earthworms, and occasionally small frogs and lizards. When feeding its nestlings, the rockfowl primarily collects earthworms, small frogs, and lizards, with the vertebrates forming most of the biomass fed to the young. In addition, rockfowl are occasionally seen eating plant material, normally from angiosperms or mosses.
caption: Columns of Dorylus ants, which flush prey items
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