Evergreen Forest Warbler | Bradypterus lopezi

Voice

A loud, rhythmic and monotonous series of repeated two- or three-note whistles, chwee-choo, chwee-choo, chwee-choo, audible at a great distance in the forest and often kept up for long periods; pairs sometimes duet. Calls a dry, rattling trrrt and a hard tchek.

Identification

14–15 cm, compact, with short, rounded wings and a fairly long, broad, rounded tail of soft feathers. Upperparts uniform dark rufous-brown to olive-brown, the tail slightly more rufous. Underparts greyish olive-brown, paler and greyer on the throat and centre of the belly, unstreaked; the flanks are warm brown. A weak, dingy supercilium is sometimes visible. Bill dark, legs brownish-pink. The sexes are alike; juveniles are more olive with a yellowish wash below. It walks and hops over the forest floor and through low undergrowth.

Confusion species

Cinnamon Bracken Warbler Bradypterus cinnamomeus is warmer cinnamon-brown, with a clearer pale supercilium, a white throat and cinnamon flanks, and lives in bracken and rank growth at forest edges rather than in the forest interior. Barratt's Warbler Bradypterus barratti has a streaked breast and occurs only much further south. Little Rush Warbler Bradypterus baboecala lives in reeds and wet rank growth. Akalats such as Sharpe's Akalat Sheppardia sharpei have an orange breast and perch upright on low branches. Song, habitat and behaviour are decisive.

Habitat

The dense undergrowth and floor of moist evergreen Afromontane forest, especially in ravines, along streams and where herbs, ferns and saplings are dense, mostly above 1,200 m. It searches the ground and the lowest layer for insects and other invertebrates.

Range and movements

Within the region in the montane forests of Malawi, such as the Nyika Plateau, Viphya, Dedza, Zomba and Mulanje, in north-eastern Zambia on the Nyika and in the Mafinga Mountains, in northern Mozambique on mountains such as Namuli and Njesi, and in the western highlands of Angola. Beyond the region fragmented in montane forests from Cameroon and Bioko to eastern Congo, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.

• Resident
• Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
• Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

How and when to look

Well-known sites are Chowo Forest on the Nyika Plateau, the forests of Zomba and Mulanje mountains in Malawi and the montane forests of the Mafinga Mountains. Listen in the early morning for the rhythmically repeated whistles, then search low near the ground; the bird sometimes comes very close but almost always stays behind leaves and stems.

Conservation status

Not threatened; the species has a large though fragmented range. In the region it is vulnerable to the loss of montane forest through logging, fire and clearance for cultivation, as on Mulanje and in Angola.

Scientific name

Bradypterus lopezi | (Alexander, 1903)

Alexander described the species in 1903 as Phlexis lopezi; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Bradypterus was introduced in 1837 by Swainson. Bradypterus comes from the Greek bradus, 'slow', and -pteros, '-winged' — for the short, rounded wings and weak flight. lopezi honours the Portuguese taxidermist José Lopes (fl. 1903), who collected for Boyd Alexander in the Cape Verde Islands and tropical Africa; later emendations to lopesi, even by the original author, are considered unjustified. The specimen the first description was based on came from Moka, Bioko (Equatorial Guinea).