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Brown-Capped Weaver | Ploceus insignis
Bruinkapwever | Tejedor Insigne
The Brown-Capped Weaver is a small, bright yellow forest weaver of African montane forests that creeps like a nuthatch along mossy branches. The male wears a chestnut cap above a black face. Within the region it is known only from the montane forests of Angola, at the extreme southern edge of its range.
Voice
A soft, high, sizzling chatter and a thin tseet or chip contact call; the song is a short, dry series of buzzing notes. The bird is often quiet and draws attention more by its behaviour than by its voice.
Recording: Martin St-Michel — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
13–14 cm; a small, slender weaver with a fairly thin black bill. The male has a chestnut forehead, crown and nape, black lores, cheeks, ear-coverts and chin, and is otherwise bright yellow on back and underparts; wings and tail are black with yellow edges, so the bird looks yellow and black in flight. The female has a black rather than chestnut cap and is slightly duller. The eye is dark. Juveniles are duller, with an olive head lacking a distinct cap. There is no separate non-breeding plumage. It creeps like a nuthatch along the underside of mossy branches.
Confusion species
Spectacled Weaver (Ploceus ocularis) has a yellow head with a narrow black eye-stripe, a pale eye and an olive-green back, without a chestnut or black cap. Black-Necked Weaver (Ploceus nigricollis) has a yellow head with a black eye-stripe and a dark back. Dark-Backed Weaver (Ploceus bicolor) has a wholly dark head and back. The combination of cap, black face, yellow back and nuthatch-like behaviour in montane forest is diagnostic; cap colour separates the sexes.
Habitat
Moist montane forest and higher escarpment forest, mainly in the canopy and among mossy branches, creepers and old man's beard lichen; also at forest edges. It forages in pairs or small groups, often in mixed foraging flocks, searching the underside of branches for insects and fruit. It breeds solitarily; the nest hangs from a branch and has an entrance tube.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Within the region only in western Angola, very locally in montane forest and higher escarpment forest. Beyond the region in separate populations in the montane forests of Nigeria and Cameroon, on Bioko, and in the Albertine Rift, Uganda, Kenya and northern Tanzania.
How and when to look
Very local and poorly known in the region; search the remaining montane forests of western Angola for mixed foraging flocks and watch for a small yellow weaver creeping upside down along mossy branches. A well-seen male with a chestnut cap is needed for a certain record.
Conservation status
Not threatened across its range. In Angola the species is vulnerable because the small, fragmented montane forests in which it lives are under pressure from logging and agriculture.
Scientific name
Ploceus insignis | (Sharpe, 1891)
Sharpe described the species in 1891 as Sycobrotus insignis; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Ploceus was introduced in 1816 by Cuvier, GLCFD. Ploceus comes from the Greek plokeus, 'plaiter, weaver', for the tightly woven, ball-shaped nest that gives weavers their name. insignis is Latin for 'remarkable, distinguished' — for the contrasting black-and-yellow plumage. The specimen the first description was based on came from Mount Elgon (Uganda/Kenya).