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Forest Scrub Robin | Tychaedon leucosticta
Boswaaierstaart | Alzacola Selvático
The Forest Scrub Robin is a shy, dark scrub robin of the forest floor that, within the region, lives only in the forests of western Angola. It is heard far more often than seen: the clear song comes from dense undergrowth while the bird itself hops over the leaf litter.
Voice
The song is a sweet, high-pitched series of clear whistles and trills, repeated with small variations, mainly in the half-light of morning and evening. The call is a soft, rasping chrr and a fine tseep.
No recording with a suitable Creative Commons licence is available for this species yet.
Identification
A small, compact scrub robin of 15 cm. The upperparts are warm dark brown, with a rufous rump. The wing coverts have white tips forming two rows of white spots, to which the scientific name leucosticta ('white-spotted') refers. The head shows a white supercilium above a dark eye-stripe, a white throat and a black malar stripe. The breast and flanks are warm orange-brown, the belly white. The tail is dark with white tips. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
Miombo Scrub Robin (Tychaedon barbata) lives in Angola in open miombo rather than dense forest and lacks the clear rows of white wing spots. White-Browed Scrub Robin (Cercotrichas leucophrys) has a streaked breast and lives in savanna. Bocage's Akalat (Sheppardia bocagei) and Gabela Akalat (Sheppardia gabela) share the forest but have no supercilium, no white wing spots and no white tail tips. Focus on habitat and song.
Habitat
Dense undergrowth of dry and moist lowland and escarpment forest, often at forest edges, in gallery forest and old secondary growth. Forages on the ground and in low bushes for insects and other small invertebrates, flicking and fanning the tail as it goes.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
In the region only in western Angola, where the subspecies reichenowi lives in the forests along the western escarpment, especially in Cuanza Norte. Beyond the region it is scattered across West Africa (Sierra Leone to Ghana) and central Africa (Central African Republic, north-eastern DR Congo and western Uganda).
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
A scarce target on birding trips to Angola. At dawn, follow the song in the forests of the northern escarpment and wait quietly at the edge of an opening in the undergrowth; the bird may then hop briefly across the forest track. Playback can help, but use it sparingly.
Conservation status
Not threatened globally. The Angolan subspecies has a small range and is poorly studied; clearance of escarpment forest and its conversion to coffee and other farming threaten its habitat.
Scientific name
Tychaedon leucosticta | (Sharpe, 1883) (GBIF: Erythropygia leucosticta)
Sharpe described the species in 1883 as Cossypha leucosticta; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Tychaedon was introduced in 1917 by Richmond. Tychaedon combines the Greek tukhē, 'chance, luck', with aēdōn, 'nightingale, songstress'; the name replaced the preoccupied Aedonopsis in 1917. leucosticta combines the Greek leukos, 'white', with stiktos, 'spotted' — for the white spots in wing and tail. The specimen the first description was based on came from Accra, Ghana.