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Black-Bellied Seedcracker | Pyrenestes ostrinus
Purperastrild | Estrilda Piquigorda Ventrinegra
The Black-Bellied Seedcracker is a large, shy estrildid of the Central African forests that cracks hard seeds with its massive bill. The region lies at the southern edge of its range: it occurs only in northern Angola and north-western Zambia.
Voice
A sharp, metallic cheek or peenk, and a soft song with trills and squeaks. Usually heard before it is seen.
Recording: Jaap van der Waarde — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
13–15 cm, with a very heavy, glossy steel-blue to black bill. The male is crimson on head, throat, breast, flanks, rump and tail; the rest of the body, from back to belly, is black. The female has a red head, breast and rump, but is otherwise brown instead of black. Juveniles are plain brown, with at most a reddish tail. Bill size varies greatly between individuals, linked to the hardness of the seeds they eat.
Confusion species
The Red-Headed Bluebill (Spermophaga ruficapilla) in northern Angola has a red face and breast, but a slate-grey to black back and a blue bill with a red tip; the female has white spots on a grey belly. The Lesser Seedcracker (Pyrenestes minor) is smaller and olive-brown with less red, and occurs only in the east of the region, with no overlap.
Habitat
Dense vegetation at forest edges, gallery forest, swamp forest and rank sedge and grass along streams and marshes, also secondary scrub and abandoned cultivation in forested country. It feeds mainly on hard seeds of sedges and grasses, sometimes also insects.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Within the region only in northern and north-eastern Angola (including Cabinda, Uíge and the Lunda provinces) and north-western Zambia (mainly Mwinilunga District). Beyond the region in West and Central Africa, from Ivory Coast to Uganda and western Kenya, south to DR Congo.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In north-western Zambia the streamside vegetation and swamp-forest edges around Mwinilunga, such as at the source of the Zambezi, are the best sites; go out early and listen for the metallic call from dense scrub. As the species is rare and shy within the region, a good view of a male is a highlight.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Widespread in Central Africa, but within the region scarce and only local; logging and conversion of swamp-forest edges threaten the small populations.
Scientific name
Pyrenestes ostrinus | (Vieillot, 1805)
Vieillot described the species in 1805 as Loxia ostrina; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Pyrenestes was introduced in 1836 by Swainson. Pyrenestes combines the Greek purēn, 'fruit-stone', with -estēs, 'eater' — for the heavy bill with which these birds crack hard seeds. ostrinus is Latin for 'purple', from ostrum, the purple dye from murex snails — for the red of head and breast. The specimen the first description was based on came from southern coast of Gabon.