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Barratt's Warbler | Bradypterus barratti
Barratts struikzanger | Zarzalero de Barratt
Barratt's Warbler is a dark, secretive warbler of rank growth and bracken at the edges of montane forest in the east of the region, from the Eastern Cape to the highlands of Zimbabwe and Mozambique. It lives almost invisibly low in the vegetation and is nearly always located by its song.
Voice
The song opens with a few high, thin notes, tseep-tseep-tseep, followed by a fast, dry, rattling series, chrrp-chrrp-chrrp-trrrr, sometimes as a duet. It sings mainly in spring and summer, from a hidden perch low in bushes or bracken. Call a hard tchek and a rattling alarm.
Recording: Jenny Sharland — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
15 cm, with short, rounded wings and a fairly long, broad, rounded tail. Upperparts uniform dark warm to olive-brown. A narrow, dingy supercilium is weak. Throat and breast dull white to pale yellowish with clear dark streaks, flanks olive-brown to warm buff, belly paler. The bill is dark and the legs pinkish-brown. The sexes are alike; juveniles are yellower below with less distinct streaks. It shuffles over the ground and through dense undergrowth.
Confusion species
Knysna Warbler Bradypterus sylvaticus is plainer, with only vague spotting on the breast and a different, accelerating song that ends in a dry trill; it lives along the south coast. Little Rush Warbler Bradypterus baboecala lives in reeds and wet rank growth, not forest, and sings an accelerating series with wing-snaps. Evergreen Forest Warbler Bradypterus lopezi is unstreaked and more rufous-brown, and occurs only in the north of the region. River Warbler Locustella fluviatilis is a summer visitor to lowland thickets, with a scaly undertail and a buzzing, mechanical song.
Habitat
Dense, rank scrub with brambles, bracken and tall grass at the edges of Afromontane forest, in wooded kloofs and along mountain streams, also in pine and eucalyptus plantations with dense undergrowth. In winter partly in lower-lying forest edges and kloofs. It forages on and just above the ground for insects and spiders.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Within the region in eastern South Africa, in the Amatola mountains of the Eastern Cape, the Midlands and Drakensberg foothills of KwaZulu-Natal, the edges of Lesotho, Eswatini, the Mpumalanga escarpment and Limpopo to the Wolkberg and Soutpansberg, and further in the eastern highlands of Zimbabwe and the adjacent mountains of Mozambique such as Gorongosa. It does not occur outside this area.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Well-known sites are Hogsback in the Eastern Cape, Karkloof and the Drakensberg forest edges in KwaZulu-Natal, Magoebaskloof and Haenertsburg in Limpopo, and Nyanga and the Vumba mountains in Zimbabwe. Listen in the morning by bramble and bracken tangles at a forest edge for the high introduction and the rattling series, then wait patiently; the bird sometimes appears briefly on an exposed twig.
Conservation status
Not threatened and locally common in suitable rank growth. Loss of forest edges, overly frequent fires and the clearing of undergrowth in plantations are local threats; a large part of its habitat lies in protected montane forests.
Scientific name
Bradypterus barratti | Sharpe, 1876
Sharpe described the species in 1876 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Bradypterus was introduced in 1837 by Swainson. Bradypterus comes from the Greek bradus, 'slow', and -pteros, '-winged' — for the short, rounded wings and weak flight. barratti honours F. A. Barratt (fl. 1875), a collector in the Transvaal, South Africa. The specimen the first description was based on came from Mac-Mac near Lydenburg (Mpumalanga), South Africa.