Passerines | Passeriformes

Families in this order

• Sugarbirds | Promeropidae2 speciesTwo species in a single genus make up this family, which is thereby confined worldwide to southern Africa. They are large, slender songbirds with a long strongly decurved bill and a narrow, steeply graduated tail that in the male far exceeds the body and streams behind the bird in flight; the plumage is dull streaked brown, with yellow undertail coverts and, in one species, a rufous breast band. The tongue is frayed into a brush at the tip and rolled into a trough along part of its length, and draws nectar from deep flowers; the diet is supplemented with the insects and spiders that sit in those same flower heads. The tie to fynbos and to Protea is close: the birds feed, sing and breed in flowering proteas, carrying pollen on head and throat from head to head, and lay in the southern winter when those shrubs are in bloom. One species keeps to the coastal fynbos of the south-west, the other to the protea and erica slopes of the higher eastern mountains. The nest is an open cup of fine twigs and fern down hidden deep in a bush; the song is a rasping, grating series delivered from a flower head and broken by clapping wingbeats and a lash of the tail.
• Sunbirds | Nectariniidae44 speciesSmall, sharp-featured birds with a thin curved bill and a tongue rolled into a tube at the tip and frayed at the very end, used to draw nectar from a flower as through a straw. Where the corolla tube is too long the base of the flower is pierced from outside, so that the nectar is taken without the bird acting as pollinator. Unlike the hummingbirds they resemble but are not related to, they almost always drink perched, clinging to the flower stem and hovering for at most a second. The glossy blue, green and purple of the males is not pigment but structural colour — layers within the feather that split the light, so that a turning bird flips from black to metal; bright pectoral tufts sit at each side of the breast and are flicked out only in display or threat. Several species wear a dull, female-like plumage outside the breeding season, and in a number of them the male carries two elongated central tail feathers. The nest is a hanging purse of plant fibre and spider silk with a side entrance and a porch, built by the female alone and in many species plastered outside with caterpillar webbing, plant down and lichen; the clutch is regularly parasitised by cuckoos of the genus Chrysococcyx. Distribution follows the flowering: from the aloes and ericas of the winter-rainfall country to the flowering trees of miombo and coastal forest, where the birds defend a territory around the richest flowering shrub throughout the day.
• Weavers | Ploceidae51 speciesSmall to medium seed-eaters with a short, heavy conical bill and strong feet, which do not pile their nests up but knot them. The male starts with a ring: he tears a narrow strip from a grass, reed or palm leaf, loops it round a stem or thin branch and pulls the end through with his bill; from that ring he works forward and back until a closed globe stands there, the entrance at the bottom and in a number of species a spout of tens of centimetres below it. Bill and foot serve as the loom, and the work takes two or three days; the female does not build but inspects and lines the inside, and if she rejects it the nest is pulled apart and begun again. Not every member of the family weaves: the buffalo weavers heap a mass of thorny sticks around the crown of a baobab or a pole, and the sociable weaver builds, with many pairs together, a single permanent grass haystack that can weigh hundreds of kilos under a tree crown or a pylon, with dozens of separate entrance tunnels underneath in which the colony also roosts outside the breeding season. In the bishops and widowbirds of the genus Euplectes the male moults in the rains into a short-lived black plumage marked with red, yellow or orange, with the back and rump feathers raised or with greatly elongated tail feathers, and afterwards falls back into a streaked sparrow-coloured dress barely separable from the female. The family breeds in colonies, from a few nests in a thorn tree to breeding grounds of millions of pairs in reed or thorn scrub; the colonies draw raptors, snakes and the diederik cuckoo, which lays its egg with a whole series of species in this family.
• Rockjumpers | Chaetopidae2 speciesA 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.
• Bushshrikes | Malaconotidae23 speciesShrike-like songbirds of scrub, thorn and forest edge, with a heavy hook-tipped bill and strong legs used to pin down large insects, lizards and nestlings. Unlike the true shrikes they rarely take an open perch; they shuffle through the densest part of the bush and are far more often heard than seen. Sound is the family's mark: clear whistled phrases that male and female interlock as a duet, timed so tightly that it sounds like one bird, in some species completed by a rasping or clicking answer from the female — a way of holding a territory and a pair bond from inside cover. The plumage ranges from plain black with white in the wing to green with a yellow, orange or deep red breast shield, and a number of species wear a black cap or a black mask; eye colour — yellow, red or white — is a usable character in several genera. Male puffbacks raise a thick white cushion of down over back and rump in display flights, so that the bird appears to float above the branch as a ball, with a clicking wingbeat. The nest is a small shallow cup of twigs and rootlets in a fork, often so thin that the eggs show through from below; the flight is short and heavy, from bush to bush.
• Chats and flycatchers | Muscicapidae68 speciesWhat these birds share outwardly is limited: they are grouped together chiefly on skull structure and hereditary data, which is why the flycatchers now sit in one family with the wheatears, rock thrushes, robin-chats and scrub robins formerly placed among the thrushes. The common ground is a small body with a thin pointed bill bristled at the base, and insect catching from a lookout: one kind darts up after a flying insect, another drops from a low perch onto the ground and hops back to the same perch. In the dry western half of the region the family is represented by pale, long-legged chats of karoo, open plain and scree, which bob the tail and droop the wings; in the eastern forest and gorge bush by robin-chats with orange underparts and a grey or black-and-white head pattern, which are accomplished mimics and work the calls of other birds into their song. A striking number carry colour in the tail — rufous, white sides or a black-and-white pattern — and flash it with a jerk on landing. They nest in holes, crevices and self-dug or appropriated tunnels in earth banks and termite mounds, or in a well-hidden cup; several species are parasitised by cuckoos, and some live in parties with helpers. Alongside the residents, which make up the bulk of the family, the southern summer brings an addition of species that breed in Eurasia and spend the non-breeding season here.
• Reed warblers | Acrocephalidae12 speciesPlain brown to olive warblers without wing bars, with a long bill, broad and flat at the base and set with bristles, a smoothly sloping forehead and long toes that grasp two upright stems at once. They climb and creep through dense waterside growth and scrub and are known above all by the song: a loud, rhythmic, grating chatter, much repeated and packed with imitations of other species, delivered by day and by night. The nest is a deep cylindrical basket woven around standing stems so that it can sway in the wind without tipping. All the European species are long-distance migrants to Africa and are present here for only three or four months.
• Larks | Alaudidae30 speciesGround birds in brown and sand, streaked all over and built to walk rather than hop: the hind claw is long and almost straight, and the back of the tarsus carries a row of separate scales instead of the smooth plate other songbirds have there. Almost all species sing on the wing, climbing or hovering, sometimes for minutes on end above ground that offers no song post. The nest is a scrape on bare soil lined with grass, and the chicks walk away from it before they can fly, which limits losses when the field is cut. Bills range from short and heavy for seed to long and curved for digging in the soil.
• Cisticolas | Cisticolidae69 speciesSmall warblers of grass, marsh and low scrub, mostly warm brown and streaked above, with short rounded wings and a graduated tail that is often held cocked and is shorter in breeding plumage than in winter. The nest is the family's signature: living grass blades or leaves stitched together with spider silk and caterpillar silk into a hidden purse that keeps growing with the plant holding it. The song is simple and endlessly repeated, usually delivered in a bounding display flight over the territory, since such ground offers no song post. The family is centred on Africa; only a single species reaches the Mediterranean coast and beyond.
• Crows and jays | Corvidae4 speciesThe largest and heaviest-built songbirds, with a powerful all-purpose bill, bristly feathers over the nostrils and strong legs used for walking as much as hopping. They eat almost anything, hide food for later and remember where they put it; their brains are the largest for their size of any bird, which shows in how readily they exploit tools, carrion and human habits. True song is absent — the calls are harsh and grating — but many species mimic other sounds. Pairs stay together for years, build a bulky stick nest, and the sexes look alike.
• Buntings | Emberizidae5 speciesSeed-eaters with a conical bill as well, but built differently from the finches: the upper mandible is narrower than the lower, with wavy cutting edges, and the palate carries a hard knob against which the seed is rolled and hulled; the gape is also distinctly angled. These are birds of open country — arable, heath, rough grass, mountain slopes — feeding on or just above the ground, though they raise their young on insects. Females and young are brown and streaked, males carry a sharply drawn head pattern; in flight the fairly long tail with white outer feathers catches the eye. The song is short, dry and monotonously repeated from a low lookout, and the nest sits on the ground or low in the vegetation.
• Waxbills | Estrildidae41 speciesSmall to very small seed-eaters with a short, thick conical bill — bright coral red in many species, silver-grey or blue-black in others — a compact body and short, rounded wings. They live in parties the year round and take their food from the seed head itself, clambering, hanging or riding the stem down under their own weight, and from the ground beneath. The nest is a closed ball of interwoven grass with an entrance at the side, often drawn out into a short tube, set low in a tussock, a thorn bush or dense reed; both parents build and take turns to incubate. The nestlings carry a fixed pattern of black spots and lines at the back of the gaping bill, with coloured papillae at the gape that light up in the dark of the nest and point the parents to the food. That food is seed brought up softened in the crop and given out one chick at a time.
• Finches | Fringillidae21 speciesThe conical bill is the mark of the family: seed is not swallowed but husked, held in a groove in the palate while the lower mandible slides the coat off. The heavier the bill, the harder the kernel it can deal with, so its shape tells from species to species what the bird depends on. Outside the breeding season they range in flocks over seed-rich fields, woods and shores, with a bounding flight and persistent contact calls that identify them at a distance. Unlike most songbirds, many species feed their young not on insects but on regurgitated seed, carried in a pouch of the gullet.
• Swallows and martins | Hirundinidae25 speciesBirds that take all their food in the air and are built entirely for it: long pointed wings, a very short flat bill with an enormous gape, and small weak feet on short legs, good for perching but hardly for walking. They drink and bathe by skimming low over water. The nest is a cup or closed flask of mud pellets against a wall, a self-dug tunnel in a steep bank, or a cavity — often in colonies. They are migrants that gather over reedbeds and wires in late summer; unlike the swifts they resemble in flight, these are ordinary songbirds that will settle on a wire.
• Shrikes | Laniidae9 speciesA hooked bill with a tooth in the cutting edge of the upper mandible, used to kill prey at the neck: these are songbirds that hunt like raptors, but with ordinary songbird feet that cannot hold prey down. That is why they impale insects, lizards and mice on thorns or barbed wire, to pin them while feeding and to store them. They sit still and upright on a lookout above open ground with scattered bushes and drop on prey from there; a black mask, a large head and a long tail belong to nearly every species. The nest is a sturdy cup deep in a thorny shrub.
• Laughingthrushes | Leiothrichidae5 speciesMedium-sized songbirds of the dense understorey of Asian woodland, with strong legs, short rounded wings and a long graduated tail: birds that clamber and hop more than they fly. The bill is stout and slightly decurved, serving equally for insects and for fruit, both taken on the ground and in thickets. They live in noisy parties for most of the year, preen one another about the head and help at each other's nests; the voice is a sustained chattering and cackling that in many species runs into a communal chorus — the sound that gave the laughingthrushes their name. Plain brown species stand beside boldly patterned heads and wings. The nest is a sturdy cup low in a bush.
• Grasshopper warblers | Locustellidae8 speciesExtremely skulking brown birds that creep mouse-like through the lowest layer of reed, rank growth and sedge, and would rather run off than fly. The build matches: short rounded wings, a broad graduated tail and strikingly long undertail coverts. The song is mechanical — an even reeling or ticking trill sustained for minutes, which seems to shift about as the bird turns its head, so that it is hard to place. The nest sits on or just above the ground under overhanging stems and is reached on foot; the sexes look alike.
• Wagtails and pipits | Motacillidae28 speciesSlender, long-legged songbirds that walk rather than hop: the foot pushes off, the head nods with it, and the long tail is pumped up and down without a pause — in the wagtails hard enough to rock the whole body. The bill is thin, straight and pointed, made for picking insects off the ground, off wet stones or out of the air; the leg is long and fine, and in the pipits the claw of the hind toe is greatly lengthened, nearly as long as the toe itself, which gives purchase in grass and sedge. Two appearances on one frame: the wagtails boldly marked in black, white, grey and yellow, the pipits brown and streaked and separated from each other mainly on call and wing formula. The nest is a cup on the ground, hidden under a tussock or in a niche, and the song is delivered in the air: up, sing, and down again on a parachuting descent.
• Orioles | Oriolidae6 speciesMedium-sized canopy birds with a fairly heavy, slightly curved bill tipped with a small hook, able to deal with hairy caterpillars as well as soft fruit. Males are bright yellow or orange with black, females and young birds greenish and finely streaked; that vivid yellow is remarkably hard to pick out among sunlit leaves. The nest is a hanging cup, woven like a hammock between the two arms of a horizontal fork high in a broadleaved tree. They stay in the crown, and clear fluting whistles give them away long before the bird itself does.
• Tits | Paridae8 speciesSmall, compact birds with a short strong bill and powerful legs; they forage acrobatically at the tips of twigs, hanging upside down, and wedge a seed under one foot to hammer it open. Almost all species nest in a cavity and lay large clutches there — eight to twelve eggs is normal, more than most songbirds manage. They store food in bark crevices and moss, and outside the breeding season travel in noisy mixed flocks through the wood. The head pattern is sharply drawn in every species and is the dependable field mark.
• Sparrows | Passeridae6 speciesStocky, short-legged seed-eaters with a heavy conical bill whose cutting edges are sharp enough to crack a grain of wheat. The tongue carries a small extra bone, the preglossale, which serves as an anvil: the seed is turned against the palate, the husk peeled off and the kernel swallowed, the whole job taking a second. Adults live on seed; the young are raised on caterpillars and aphids. The nest is an untidy domed ball of grass, straw and feathers stuffed into a cavity — a tree hole, a wall crevice, a roof tile or another bird's abandoned nest — and usually stands in a loose colony, with two to four broods a year. Bathing is done in dry dust: the bird kicks out a scrape and works the sand through its plumage. Several species live beside people all year, in villages, farmyards, cities and grain stores, where spilt feed and the buildings themselves supply both food and nest holes.
• Leaf warblers | Phylloscopidae4 speciesSmall, slender warblers with a thin pointed bill, green to grey-green above and pale below, usually with a supercilium and sometimes with wing bars. The sexes are alike and the species differ so little that the simple, much repeated song is in practice the most reliable mark. They are in constant motion through canopy and scrub: gleaning leaves, hovering at a leaf tip, snatching an insect in mid-air. The nest is domed with a side entrance and sits on or just above the ground, even in species that otherwise spend their whole lives high in the trees.
• Bulbuls | Pycnonotidae31 speciesMedium-sized songbirds with soft, loose, almost downy plumage, a short, slender and slightly decurved bill with stiff bristles at its base, and short, weak legs: bulbuls hardly walk, working through cover in hops instead. Long hair-like feathers grow on the nape, and many species can raise the crown feathers into a pointed crest. The diet is largely fruit, with blossom, nectar and insects added, which makes them among the most important seed dispersers in warm regions. They live in pairs or noisy parties along forest edges, in scrub, orchards and gardens, like to perch high and in the open, and deliver a short whistled or chattering phrase from there. The nest is a rather thin cup in the fork of a shrub or low tree, and both parents feed the young.
• Penduline tits | Remizidae2 speciesVery small birds with a fine, sharply pointed conical bill for picking small insects, spiders and seeds from reed, willow and poplar. The family's hallmark is the nest: a hanging purse of plant down and spider silk felted around drooping twigs, with a short spout entrance at the side, so nothing can reach it from below. Such a nest may take weeks to build, yet the brood is usually raised by one parent alone, the other leaving to start again elsewhere. The voice is a thin, high whistle that is easily overlooked.
• Starlings | Sturnidae20 speciesRobust birds with a straight pointed bill and strong legs; they walk purposefully over the ground rather than hop. They feed by pushing the closed bill into the turf and forcing it open there — the jaw muscles are built for it, and the eyes are set far enough forward for the bird to look down along the open bill. In many species the plumage is metallic, a gloss that comes from feather structure rather than pigment, often flecked with pale spots. They are thoroughly social: flocks while feeding, communal roosts, and nest holes close together; many species are accomplished mimics.
• Sylvia warblers | Sylviidae8 speciesSturdier than the leaf warblers, with a thicker bill and a stronger head; these are birds of scrub, thorn hedge and maquis that move low and under cover. Many have a bare eye-ring and a strikingly coloured iris, and males wear a dark or contrasting head while females stay browner — an unusual difference among songbirds of this size. They take insects in summer, but from late summer switch largely to fruit, which fuels their migration and spreads a great many seeds. The nest is a neat, thin-walled cup low in a bush; males often build several unfinished nests before one is taken into use.
• Thrushes | Turdidae10 speciesMedium-sized birds with an upright carriage, long strong legs and a moderately long slender bill. On the ground they work in short stages — a few hops, a halt to look and listen, then a strike — and from late summer into winter they turn largely to berries and fallen fruit, which is why whole populations shift southwest when the ground freezes. The song is loud and fluting, built of repeated motifs and delivered from a high open perch, above all at dawn and dusk. The nest is a solid cup, in many species plastered inside with mud; young birds are spotted even where the adults are plain.
• Indigobirds and whydahs | Viduidae9 speciesSmall seed-eaters with a thick, often coral-red conical bill, which build no nest and raise no young of their own. The female lays her white eggs in the nests of waxbills; the host pair incubates them and feeds the strange chick alongside its own, for nothing is turned out of the nest. This works because the chick matches its host down to the details: the same spots, blotches and coloured papillae at the back of the gaping bill, the same begging posture and the same begging call as the nest mates beside it. Each species is tied to its own circle of hosts, and the males take the song of their host into their own repertoire, so that females come to the right species. In the breeding season males wear black and white and, in some, greatly elongated tail feathers, used in a display hovering above the female; out of that season every species is streaked and sparrow-like, separable in practice only by bill colour.
• Oxpeckers | Buphagidae2 speciesTwo species, the Red-billed and Yellow-billed Oxpeckers, which depend entirely on large mammals such as buffalo, rhinos, giraffes, antelopes and cattle. Sharp, strongly curved claws let them cling to a host's hide at any angle, and the stiff, pointed tail braces the body the way a woodpecker's does. The laterally flattened bill is worked through the hair with a scissoring action to remove ticks, lice and botfly larvae. Oxpeckers also take blood and tissue from open wounds and may keep those wounds open, so whether the relationship is mutualism or parasitism is still debated. When disturbed they give a harsh, hissing rattle, which also puts the host on alert. They nest in tree cavities lined with hair plucked from their hosts, and extra birds often help raise the brood. They are related to the starlings but form a distinct lineage that branched off early.
• African and Green Broadbills | Calyptomenidae1 speciesA small family of African broadbills (Smithornis) and Asian green broadbills. Only the African Broadbill occurs in this region. Broadbills are suboscines, a very ancient passerine lineage that split off before the true songbirds evolved, and only a few such families survive in the Old World, the pittas among them. The African Broadbill is stocky and big-headed, with a strikingly wide, flat bill ending in a small hook. It sits motionless in the shady understorey of forest and dense thicket, sallies out to snap up insects, and returns to its perch. The male is most easily detected by its display: a short horizontal loop of less than a metre around its perch, during which modified flight feathers produce a mechanical, trilling 'frrrrrup'. The sound is made by the wings, not the voice, and the white back patch is puffed out as he flies. The nest is a pear-shaped purse with a ragged 'beard' of plant material, hung low from a branch.
• Cuckooshrikes | Campephagidae5 speciesMedium-sized, slender arboreal birds of Africa, Asia and Australasia, represented here by the black cuckooshrikes (Campephaga) and grey species (Ceblepyris). A hallmark of the family is the dense rump plumage with stiff, spine-like shafts, which detach easily; their exact function is uncertain. Cuckooshrikes eat many large, hairy caterpillars that most birds avoid, beating and rubbing each one against a branch to strip off irritant hairs and gut contents before swallowing it. In Campephaga the sexes differ sharply. Males are glossy blue-black, sometimes with a yellow gape or red or yellow shoulder patches, while females are olive-yellow and finely barred, which recalls a cuckoo. Grey species show little difference between the sexes. They forage quietly through the canopy and are easily overlooked, since their calls are mostly soft high trills or whistles. The nest is a small, shallow cup of moss and lichen, camouflaged on a horizontal fork.
• Drongos | Dicruridae4 speciesGlossy black, upright-perching birds with red eyes, a stout bill and, in many species, a deeply forked tail whose outer feathers curl outwards. About thirty species occur from the Old World tropics to Australia. They hunt from an exposed perch, sallying out to take flying insects and returning to the same spot, and they readily follow grazing game, livestock and bush fires to catch prey flushed into the open. Drongos are famously pugnacious, loudly chasing crows, hawks and even eagles many times their size, especially near the nest. The Fork-tailed Drongo is a remarkable mimic of other species' alarm calls. Around meerkats and babblers it gives false alarms and then steals the food they abandon as they flee, switching between different imitations so its victims keep falling for the trick. The nest is a shallow, open cup slung beneath a horizontal fork and fiercely defended.
• Yellow Flycatchers | Erythrocercidae1 speciesA small African family of three species, all in the genus Erythrocercus; the region's representative is Livingstone's Flycatcher. They were long placed with the monarchs or the Old World flycatchers, until molecular studies showed them to be a separate branch within the warbler group. They are small, warbler-like birds with a fine bill and a fairly long tail, mainly olive-green and yellow, and some species have a rufous tail or cap. They are almost never still, constantly fanning and swinging the tail from side to side, probably to flush insects. Small insects and spiders are gleaned from leaves and twigs or snatched in short fluttering sallies. They live in the canopy and dense tangles of lowland and riverine forest and thicket, usually in small, restless, vocal parties that often join mixed-species flocks. The song is a rapid, high-pitched jumble of twitters and trills. The nest is a ball of moss and fibres with a side entrance, suspended from a twig.
• Hylias | Hyliidae2 speciesA small African family of two species, the Green Hylia and the Tit-hylia, recognised as a separate family only after molecular study. It belongs to the warbler group, with the bush warblers and long-tailed tits as its probable closest relatives. Both species live in tropical rainforest and forest edge, reaching northern Angola and Zambia. The Green Hylia is a plain olive-green bird with a pale eyebrow. It is hard to see in dense foliage but is given away by its loud, far-carrying whistle of two or three clear notes. At about 8 cm the Tit-hylia is one of Africa's smallest birds. It forages acrobatically like a tit through the canopy, picking tiny insects, spiders and scale insects from leaves and twigs. The Green Hylia builds a domed nest, while the Tit-hylia makes a large bag of plant fibres that small groups also use for roosting.
• Hyliotas | Hyliotidae2 speciesA small, isolated African family of four species in the genus Hyliota, two of which occur in this region. Formerly placed among the warblers or flycatchers, they are now shown by molecular studies to be an early-diverging branch with no close living relatives. They are small, compact birds with a short, fine bill. Males are glossy blue-black above with a bold white wing stripe, and buff to orange-yellow below. Females are duller and greyer above. Hyliotas live high in the canopy of dry open woodland, especially miombo. There they glean insects from leaves and twigs with short hops and flutters, often in mixed-species flocks. They are unobtrusive and hard to follow against the sky, and their soft, high contact calls are easily missed. The nest is a small, neat cup placed high in a tree fork.
• African Warblers | Macrosphenidae13 speciesA recently erected family, based on molecular work, that unites a varied group of African warbler-like birds formerly scattered among the Old World warblers. It is one of the oldest branches of the warbler group and occurs only in Africa. Its members differ greatly in form. Crombecs (Sylvietta) are tiny, round birds with a long bill and a tail so short it seems absent, and they creep along branches like nuthatches. Longbills (Macrosphenus) live in forest. The Cape Grassbird (Sphenoeacus) and Moustached Grass Warbler (Melocichla) are large warblers of rank grass and scrub with long, ragged tails. The Rockrunner (Achaetops) lives on rocky slopes in Namibia and Angola, and Victorin's Warbler (Cryptillas) in damp mountain fynbos. Almost all are insectivores that keep hidden in dense scrub, grass or forest understorey and are hard to see, so their loud, distinctive songs are usually the best way to find them. Crombecs hang a purse-shaped nest from a twig, while the grass-dwellers build deep cups low in vegetation.
• Dapple-throat and allies | Modulatricidae2 speciesOne of Africa's least-known bird families, with three species in three genera. Once treated as babblers or thrushes, they were shown by molecular study to form their own family, related to the African sugarbirds. Only the Dapple-throat (Arcanator orostruthus) occurs in this region. It is a stocky, thrush-like bird, olive-brown above, with the throat and breast dappled yellow and dusky. Like all members of the family it is confined to isolated montane forests, 'sky islands' separated by lowland: a few Eastern Arc ranges in Tanzania and Mount Namuli in northern Mozambique. It skulks on or just above the forest floor, searching leaf litter, moss and low tangles for insects and other invertebrates. Its breeding biology and vocal repertoire are poorly documented. Its small, fragmented range and continuing forest loss make it Vulnerable.
• Monarch flycatchers | Monarchidae6 speciesSmall to medium-sized, restless insectivores of forest, woodland edge and riparian growth. The bill is broad and flattened, opening to a wide gape fringed with stiff rictal bristles that help secure flying prey. Monarchs forage energetically: short sallies from a perch, gleaning from foliage, and agile fluttering pursuits, often with fanned tail and flicked wings. In the paradise flycatchers (Terpsiphone) the male has a crest, a bright cobalt-blue eye-ring and bill, and greatly elongated central tail feathers. In the African Paradise Flycatcher these can more than double the bird's length, and rufous, white and intermediate morphs occur. Trochocercus is shorter-tailed and more retiring, keeping to denser forest. The nest is a neat, compact cup set on a slender horizontal fork, bound tightly with spider silk and covered outside with lichen, so it looks like a knot on the branch. Both sexes incubate, the long-tailed male included, his streamers trailing over the rim. Calls are harsh, rasping scolds. The song is a brief, ringing whistled trill.
• Nicators | Nicatoridae3 speciesA small, exclusively African family of heavy-set, thrush-sized songbirds with olive-green upperparts, greyish underparts and conspicuous yellow spots on the wing coverts. The bill is stout and slightly hooked, and males are markedly larger than females. Their build and colouring are so bulbul-like that nicators spent decades in Pycnonotidae. They were later shuffled towards the shrikes and bush-shrikes until molecular studies revealed an isolated, ancient lineage deserving its own family. Nicators keep to dense thickets, forest edges and the understorey of both dry and moist forest. There they work slowly and deliberately through tangles, taking insects, caterpillars and other invertebrates, with some fruit. They are heard far more often than seen: from deep cover comes a startlingly loud, rich, far-carrying song, a sudden rush of full whistles and liquid gurgles that seems out of proportion to so unobtrusive a bird. The nest is a flimsy, almost see-through platform of twigs placed low in a bush.
• Ground babblers | Pellorneidae3 speciesSmall, brown, self-effacing songbirds of the dim understorey of moist forest. In southern Africa the family is represented by the genus Illadopsis. They resemble small thrushes, with a straight, fairly slender bill, sturdy legs, rounded wings and a short to medium tail. Upperparts are warm brown and underparts grey to pale. Species differ mainly in the tone of throat and flanks and are notoriously hard to separate in the field. Illadopsises forage on or just above the forest floor, flicking over dead leaves with the bill to expose ants, beetles, spiders and other small invertebrates in the litter. They live in pairs or small parties and rarely leave cover. Their plain appearance is offset by a distinctive voice: clear, pure whistled phrases, often rising or falling and frequently given in duet. The voice is the most reliable way to identify the species. The family was separated from the old, very broad Timaliidae only after molecular work showed that assemblage to be a catch-all of unrelated lineages.
• Pittas | Pittidae1 speciesPlump, thrush-like ground birds of tropical forest, with a very short tail, a stout bill and long, strong legs for hopping across the forest floor. The plumage is made of sharply defined, jewel-like blocks of colour. In the African Pitta these are a green back, sky-blue spots on wing and rump, a black-and-buff striped head, a buff breast and a scarlet belly. Yet pittas are extraordinarily hard to see: in the gloom of the forest floor the colours dissolve, and a disturbed bird freezes or runs rather than flies. They feed on earthworms, snails and insects, found by tossing leaf litter aside with the bill. When breeding, the male calls from a low branch with a loud, frog-like 'prrroup', jumping up to flash white wing patches. The African Pitta is an intra-African migrant. It breeds during the rains in lowland forest and dense thicket in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe, among other countries, then withdraws northward to non-breeding forests in East Africa. It migrates at night, and vagrants sometimes turn up in gardens. The nest is a domed ball of twigs with a side entrance.
• Batises and wattle-eyes | Platysteiridae14 speciesA diverse, purely African family of small, big-headed, short-tailed, flycatcher-like birds with a broad, flattened bill ending in a small hook. Wattle-eyes (Platysteira, Dyaphorophyia) have a conspicuous eye-wattle, a ring of bare, brightly coloured skin around the eye that is red, blue or green depending on species. Batises (Batis) are grey, black and white, often with a yellow or orange iris. Males usually wear a black breast band and females a chestnut one, so the sexes are easy to tell apart. The White-tailed Shrike (Lanioturdus) of Namibia and Angola is a long-legged, ground-feeding outlier. The family takes insects by sallying from a perch or by gleaning leaves and twigs. A distinctive feature is the loud wing-clapping or 'frrrt' sound produced in display flights and when alarmed. Calls are simple, repeated whistles, in batises often a descending series of two or three notes. The nest is a tiny cup densely bound with spider silk and decorated with lichen, set on a branch in forest or savanna woodland.
• Spotted creepers | Salpornithidae1 speciesA family with a single genus, represented in Africa by one species, the African Spotted Creeper. The plumage is dark brown, densely spotted and barred with white and buff, and vanishes against rough bark. The bill is slender and distinctly decurved. The bird climbs trunks in a spiral, prising insects, spiders and larvae from bark crevices, then drops to the base of the next tree. In this it closely recalls the Eurasian treecreepers (Certhia), but it lacks their stiffened, supporting tail: its tail is soft and not braced against the trunk. The resemblance is largely convergent. Molecular studies place Salpornis in the same broad group as treecreepers, nuthatches and wrens, but as a separate, ancient lineage outside the true treecreepers (Certhiidae). It is quiet and unobtrusive, alone or in pairs, sometimes joining mixed foraging flocks, in open miombo and other dry woodland and wooded savanna. The nest is a small cup in a horizontal branch fork, camouflaged with flakes of bark, lichen and spider silk.
• Fairy flycatchers | Stenostiridae4 speciesA small family of tiny, delicately built, flycatcher-like birds with soft, loose plumage. In southern Africa they are represented by the crested blue flycatchers (Elminia) and the Fairy Flycatcher (Stenostira). They were long placed with the true flycatchers or the monarchs, but molecular studies showed that they form a distinct lineage with a few Asian genera, closer to the tits. Colours are mainly blue-grey, slate and white. Elminia species are often crested and have long, white-edged tails. The Fairy Flycatcher is grey with a black mask, a white supercilium and a white wing bar. All are restless and fidgety, constantly fanning the tail, drooping the wings and flitting through foliage to flush small insects, which they snatch in mid-air or glean from leaves. Elminia keeps to the canopy and edges of montane and riverine forest. The Fairy Flycatcher breeds in Karoo and fynbos scrub and moves east to milder regions in winter. Calls are thin, high-pitched squeaks or brief, rapid trills.
• Vangas and helmetshrikes | Vangidae6 speciesA family that radiated spectacularly on Madagascar, producing vangas with bills like those of woodpeckers, creepers, shrikes and massive hook-bills. Its southern African members are far more uniform: the helmetshrikes (Prionops) and the shrike-flycatchers (Bias, Megabyas). Their relationship to the Madagascan vangas became clear only through molecular work. They have a stout, shrike-like hooked bill and eat mainly insects, gleaned from branches and foliage or taken in short sallies. Helmetshrikes have a brightly coloured fleshy eye-wattle, yellow or red, and most have a crest or stiff forehead feathers. They live year-round in noisy family parties of five to twelve birds that move through savanna and woodland in close formation, keeping contact with bill-snapping, chattering and chorused churrs. Breeding is cooperative: a single dominant pair lays, and all group members help incubate, feed the young and defend the nest. The nest is a compact cup neatly bound with spider silk on a horizontal branch.
• White-eyes | Zosteropidae4 speciesSmall, yellowish-green songbirds instantly recognised by the white eye-ring of tiny, dense feathers. The bill is short, sharp and slightly curved, and the tongue ends in a brush-like tip used to take nectar. The diet is broad: insects and spiders gleaned from leaves and flowers, nectar, and soft fruit that they pierce. Outside the breeding season white-eyes move in busy flocks that pass rapidly from tree to tree, kept together by a constant stream of thin, high-pitched contact calls. The song is a fast, varied warbling twitter. Pairs breed alone, building a delicate cup slung like a hammock in a branch fork. Incubation and fledging are notably short, each around eleven to twelve days. Zosterops is among the fastest-diversifying bird groups on Earth. From Africa and Asia, flocks have colonised countless islands and archipelagos and split into distinct species there in remarkably little time. In southern Africa they occupy forest edge, scrub, riverine woodland, savanna and gardens.