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Black-Fronted Bushshrike | Chlorophoneus nigrifrons
Reichenows bosklauwier | Bubú Frentinegro
Black-Fronted Bushshrike is a colourful but shy bushshrike of montane and mist forest in the east of the region. Like Many-Colored Bushshrike it has several colour morphs of the underparts, and like all canopy bushshrikes it is heard far more often than it is seen. In southern Africa it reaches the southern limit of its range.
Voice
The male gives a low, repeated series of whistles, hoo-hoo or wheep-wheep, and a soft, liquid oo-wheep. The female answers with a dry, rasping chrrrr that swells in volume. Both calls are ventriloquial and come from the high canopy.
Recording: isaac kilusu — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
18–19 cm. The male has a black forehead and a black mask through the eye, a grey crown and nape, and a green back, wings and tail, the tail with yellow tips. Throat and underparts are, depending on the morph, yellow with an orange-red breast, wholly yellow, buff or, rarely, blackish; southern birds mostly have a yellow throat and an orange to red breast. The female lacks the black forehead, has a grey face and paler yellow underparts with at most an orange wash. Juveniles are green above and pale greenish-yellow below with fine barring.
Confusion species
Olive Bushshrike Chlorophoneus olivaceus, which lives in the same forests, has no black forehead; the ruddy morph has white lores and a buff breast, the olive morph a green head. Orange-Breasted Bushshrike Chlorophoneus sulfureopectus has a yellow forehead and supercilium and lives in open woodland. Grey-Headed Bushshrike Malaconotus blanchoti is much larger, with a heavy bill and a yellow eye. The female resembles the female Olive Bushshrike, but lacks the white lores.
Habitat
Evergreen montane and mist forest with tall trees, from about 900 to 2000 m, sometimes also tall riverine forest in the hills. It forages in the canopy for insects, often in mixed flocks, and rarely comes low.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
In South Africa only in the montane forests of the escarpment in Limpopo and Mpumalanga, such as at Magoebaskloof and around Graskop. Further in the eastern highlands of Zimbabwe, in montane forest in Mozambique, in the highlands of Malawi and in northern Zambia. Beyond the region in the south-east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and from Tanzania north to the mountains of central Kenya.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
The best sites in southern Africa are Woodbush Forest and Magoebaskloof in Limpopo and the Bvumba Mountains in Zimbabwe. Listen for the low whistling and the rasping reply, then scan the highest canopy; the bird often sits still for a long time. In mixed flocks it sometimes comes a little lower.
Conservation status
Not globally threatened. In southern Africa its habitat is small and fragmented, and the species is locally scarce there and vulnerable to the loss of indigenous montane forest, including to plantations of alien trees.
Scientific name
Chlorophoneus nigrifrons | (Reichenow, 1896)
Reichenow described the species in 1896 as Laniarius nigrifrons; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Chlorophoneus was introduced in 1851 by Cabanis. Chlorophoneus comes from the Greek khlōros, 'green', and phoneus, 'murderer' — a green shrike, for the predatory habits of shrikes. nigrifrons comes from the Latin niger, 'black', and frons, 'forehead' — for the male's black forehead. The specimen the first description was based on came from Marangu, Kilimanjaro, Tanzania.