All species › Woodpeckers and allies › Honeyguides › Cassin's Honeybird
Cassin's Honeybird | Prodotiscus insignis
Dwerghoningspeurder | Indicador Insigne
Cassin's Honeybird is a small olive-green honeyguide of the Central African rainforest canopy, within the region restricted to northern Angola. Like its relatives it feeds on wax and scale insects and is a brood parasite of small passerines.
Voice
Little known and usually silent. A thin, high tseet and a soft crackling wing sound during the display flight above the canopy.
No recording with a suitable Creative Commons licence is available for this species yet.
Identification
About 12–13 cm, with a short, fine bill. The upperparts are bright olive-green, the head greyish-green, the underparts grey with an olive wash on the flanks. The outer tail feathers are largely white, and the white downy tufts at the sides of the rump can show in display or when preening. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
Green-Backed Honeybird (Prodotiscus zambesiae) of miombo is whiter below and less green on the flanks, and lives in open woodland rather than forest. Least Honeyguide (Indicator exilis) has a thicker bill, a dark malar stripe and yellow-edged flight feathers. Small olive-green warblers lack the white tail sides.
Habitat
Edges and clearings of lowland rainforest, gallery forest and mature secondary forest, mainly in the high canopy. It gleans wax and scale insects from branches and leaves and also hawks insects. Hosts are barely known; presumably small passerines with cup or domed nests.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Within the region only in northern Angola, including Cabinda and the forest areas of Uíge and Cuanza Norte; in Zambia at most in the extreme north-west. Beyond the region from Sierra Leone through the West and Central African forest belt to Uganda and western Kenya.
How and when to look
A very difficult species: in northern Angola search forest edges and clearings with a view into the canopy, preferably from a raised point. Watch for a small green bird with white tail sides that sallies like a flycatcher or displays above the crowns.
Conservation status
Not threatened and widespread in the Central African forest zone. Within the region little known and probably under-recorded; forest loss in northern Angola reduces habitat locally.
Scientific name
Prodotiscus insignis | (Cassin, 1856)
Cassin described the species in 1856 as Hetoerodes insignis; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Prodotiscus was introduced in 1850 by Sundevall. Prodotiscus is a diminutive of Prodotes, an old name for honeyguides, from the Greek prodotēs, 'betrayer' — for birds that 'betray' bees' nests to people and honey badgers. insignis is Latin for 'remarkable, distinguished'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Moonda River, Gabon.