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Southern tchagra | |
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Scientific classification | |
Domain: | Eukaryota |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Chordata |
Class: | Aves |
Order: | Passeriformes |
Family: | Malaconotidae |
Genus: | Tchagra |
Species: | T. tchagra |
Binomial name | |
Tchagra tchagra (Vieillot, 1816) | |
The southern tchagra (Tchagra tchagra) is a passerine bird found in dense scrub and coastal bush in southern and south-eastern South Africa and Eswatini.
This species is a bushshrike, a group closely related to the true shrikes in the family Laniidae, and formerly included in that family.
The southern tchagra is 17–21 cm in length. It has a brown crown and black eye stripes separated by a broad white supercilium. The underparts are pale grey and the upperparts pale brown. The folded wings are chestnut and the tail is black, tipped white. The longish bill is black. The sexes are similar, but young birds are duller and have a buff stripe through the eye. This species is similar to the black-crowned tchagra, but that species is larger, and the adult, as its name implies, has a black rather than brown crown.
An identification pitfall is that juvenile black-crowned tchagra has a brown crown. It can be separated from southern tchagra by its larger size, relatively shorter bill and paler underparts.
There are three fairly similar subspecies of southern tchagra. Nominate T. t. tchagra of the Western Cape has the darkest underparts and longest bill. T. t. caffrariae has paler underparts and the shortest bill, and T. t. natalensis of eastern South Africa and Eswatini has the palest underparts and a reddish-brown crown.
The male southern tchagra has a descending whistling song, ttttrtr te te te teuuu given in its display flight or from a perch. The female responds with a trilled tzerrrrrrrr.
The cup nest is constructed of twigs and stems in a branch fork in a bush or scrub. Two, sometimes three eggs are laid. These are white, marked with grey and reddish-brown, and hatch after about 16 days, with another 14 days to fledging.
This is a solitary territorial species, less conspicuously than true shrikes, especially when breeding. It forages on the ground for insects and other small prey.
The lesser grey shrike is a member of the shrike family Laniidae. It breeds in South and Central Europe and western Asia in the summer and migrates to winter quarters in southern Africa in the early autumn, returning in spring. It is a scarce vagrant to western Europe, including Great Britain, usually as a spring or autumn erratic.
The rufous-tailed scrub robin is a medium-sized member of the family Muscicapidae. Other common names include the rufous scrub robin, rufous bush chat, rufous bush robin and the rufous warbler. It breeds around the Mediterranean and east to Pakistan. It also breeds south of the Sahara from the Sahel region east to Somalia; these African birds are sometimes considered to be a separate species, the African scrub robin. It is partially migratory, wintering in Africa and India. This is a very rare visitor to northern Europe.
The black-crowned tchagra is a bushshrike. This family of passerine birds is closely related to the true shrikes in the family Laniidae, and was once included in that group.
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The tchagras are passerine birds in the bushshrike family, which are closely related to the true shrikes in the family Laniidae, and were once included in that group.
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The black-backed puffback is a species of passerine bird in the family Malaconotidae. They are common to fairly common sedentary bushshrikes in various wooded habitats in Africa south of the equator. They restlessly move about singly, in pairs or family groups, and generally frequent tree canopies. Like others of its genus, the males puff out the loose rump and lower back feathers in display, to assume a remarkable ball-like appearance. They draw attention to themselves by their varied repertoire of whistling, clicking and rasping sounds. Their specific name cubla, originated with Francois Levaillant, who derived it from a native southern African name, where the "c" is an onomatopoeic click sound. None of the other five puffback species occur in southern Africa.
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