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Fraser's Rufous Thrush | Stizorhina fraseri
Frasers kortpootlijster | Zorzal de Fraser
Fraser’s Rufous Thrush is an upright, flycatcher-like thrush of the understorey and mid-stratum of humid lowland forest. In the region it is a speciality of the evergreen gallery forests of northern Angola and the far north-west of Zambia.
Voice
The song is a rising series of three to five slow, mournful whistles, too too tooee tooee, often repeated at length from a hidden perch in the mid-stratum. Calls are a soft chuk and a high, thin whistle.
Recording: julien Birard — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
18–19 cm. A slim thrush with short legs and a fairly long tail. Head and upperparts are plain olive-brown; throat, breast and belly warm rufous-orange, a little paler on the belly. The tail is dark brown with rufous corners to the outer feathers, obvious when the tail is spread. In flight the wings show a rufous panel from the rufous underwing and inner webs of the flight feathers. Bill dark, legs grey. The sexes are alike. It sits still and upright for long periods and catches prey in a short sally or in the air, often quivering its wings afterwards.
Confusion species
The female African Paradise Flycatcher (Terpsiphone viridis) is also rufous, but has a crested blue-grey head and a blue eye-ring and is far more active. Brown Illadopsis (Illadopsis fulvescens) lives low in the same forest, but is duller brown, with no rufous in tail or wing, and shuffles on the ground. Bocage’s Akalat (Sheppardia bocagei) is much smaller, with an orange throat and breast and a white belly.
Habitat
Understorey and mid-stratum of humid evergreen forest: in the region mainly gallery and swamp forest along spring-fed streams and rivers (known in Zambia as mushitu), and in northern Angola lowland forest and old shade-coffee plantations. Sometimes joins mixed foraging flocks.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
In the region only in northern and north-eastern Angola (including Cabinda, Uíge, Cuanza Norte and the Lunda provinces) and the far north-west of Zambia (Mwinilunga and the Zambezi source forests). Resident. Beyond, through the forest belt of West and Central Africa from Sierra Leone to Uganda and southern DR Congo.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Search the Zambezi source forests and the mushitu around Mwinilunga and Ikelenge, preferably in the early morning when the slow whistled series is easiest to hear. The bird often sits motionless on a horizontal branch 3–10 m up; look for the rufous-orange breast in the gloom of the forest.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Fairly common over most of its range. The Zambian population is small and depends on fragmented gallery forest threatened by clearing, cultivation and fire.
Scientific name
Stizorhina fraseri | (Strickland, 1844)
Strickland described the species in 1844 as Muscicapa Fraseri; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Stizorhina was introduced in 1899 by Oberholser. Stizorhina probably comes from the Greek stizō, 'to tattoo, to mark', and rhis, genitive rhinos, 'nose, nostril'; exactly what it refers to is unclear. fraseri honours the English zoologist Louis Fraser (1810–1866), who collected the first specimen during the Niger expedition of 1841–1842. The specimen the first description was based on came from Bioko (Fernando Po), Equatorial Guinea.