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Bocage's Akalat | Sheppardia bocagei
Bocages janfrederik | Akelat de Bocage
Bocage's Akalat is a small, orange-breasted robin of dense forest strips along streams in the highlands of Angola and north-western Zambia. It lives hidden in the undergrowth of gallery forest and is mostly detected by its song.
Voice
The song is a series of clear, pure whistles in short phrases, rising and falling and often repeated from cover, mainly at dawn and dusk. The alarm is a dry, rattling trrrt; it also gives a soft tseep.
Recording: Dries Van de Loock — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
A compact akalat of 13 to 14 cm. Crown and upperparts are olive-brown, the crown slightly greyer; rump and tail warm rufous-brown. Face, throat and breast are bright orange-rufous, grading into a whitish belly with olive flanks. The eye is large and dark, the legs pinkish-brown. Sexes alike. Juveniles are dark with buff spots. It hops low through the undergrowth and over the forest floor, often close to running water.
Confusion species
Grey-Winged Robin-Chat (Sheppardia polioptera) has a grey crown and nape, a white supercilium and grey edges to the wing feathers, and is an exuberant mimic. Gabela Akalat (Sheppardia gabela) is smaller and duller orange-tawny, and lives only in escarpment forest around Gabela. White-Browed Robin-Chat (Cossypha heuglini) is larger, with a black head, broad white supercilium and orange tail with dark centre. Note the orange-rufous head with no white stripe.
Habitat
Dense undergrowth of evergreen gallery forest along streams and rivers, swamp forest and moist forest remnants in ravines, in Angola also submontane forest on the slopes of the central highlands, mostly between 1100 and 2000 m. Forages on the ground and low in the undergrowth for insects.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
In Angola in the west-central highlands (Huambo, Bié, Benguela and Cuanza Sul, including Mount Moco and the forest remnants of the Bailundo highlands) and locally in the north of the country. In Zambia in the north-west, especially in the forest strips of Mwinilunga District, and locally in the north. Beyond the region in southern and eastern DR Congo, western Tanzania and isolated montane forests of Cameroon, Nigeria and Bioko.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In Zambia the gallery forests around Mwinilunga and the source of the Zambezi are good sites; in Angola the forest remnants on Mount Moco. Walk along the edge of a forest strip and listen for the clear whistled phrases; a short rattle gives away where the bird is perched. Patient waiting at an opening by a stream is most rewarding.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The species has a large but fragmented range. Within the region gallery and montane forests are declining through logging, cultivation up to stream banks and fire, especially in the Angolan highlands, where the forest remnants on Mount Moco are small and vulnerable.
Scientific name
Sheppardia bocagei | (Finsch & Hartlaub, 1870)
Finsch & Hartlaub described the species in 1870 as Cossypha bocagei; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Sheppardia was introduced in 1909 by Haagner. Sheppardia honours P. A. Sheppard, a farmer and bird collector near Beira in Mozambique, who found the first specimen of East Coast Akalat. bocagei honours the Portuguese zoologist José Vicente Barbosa du Bocage (1823–1907), an authority on the fauna of Angola. The specimen the first description was based on came from Bibala, Namibe Province, Angola.