Rockjumpers | Chaetopidae

Rotsspringers | Saltarrocas

A monotypic family: one genus with two species, which together make up the entire family and are both confined to South Africa and Lesotho. Molecularly the group stands isolated, with no close relatives among the songbirds; its nearest known kin live in Asia and on Madagascar. They are large, thrush-like birds with long powerful legs, a stout black bill and a long graduated tail carried raised as they move. The male has a black head with a broad white malar stripe and white supercilium, a slate-grey back and rufous to orange underparts; the female is duller, with grey on the head and a paler, more ochre belly. They move by bounding and running over boulders and scree in fits and starts with the tail jerked; the flight is short and weak and is avoided, and when disturbed they vanish between the stones. They live in territorial groups in which young from earlier broods help to feed, and build a large open cup of grass stems on the ground, hidden under an overhanging rock or in a tussock of restio or fibre grass. The range is sharply bounded: one species in the boulder-strewn mountain fynbos of the south-western Cape ranges, the other in the alpine grassland of the Drakensberg and Lesotho highlands, generally above two thousand metres. The voice is a thin, high, far-carrying whistle that echoes across the slope and betrays the bird before the eye finds it.