Golden-Backed Bishop (Euplectes aureus) — Vorstman's Guide to the Birds of Southern Africa

Voice

A soft, sizzling, grating song of short chirps and buzzing notes, chip-chip-zzzee, from a bush or tall grass stem. The call is a dry chik.

Listen: CallXC694792

Recording: Phil Gregory — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto

Identification

About 12 cm, with a short tail and a heavy conical bill. The breeding male is black on head and underparts, with a golden-yellow mantle and back that glows like a saddle; wings and tail are blackish brown with pale edges. The female and non-breeding male are tawny and dark-streaked, with a pale supercilium and a yellowish, finely streaked breast, and closely resemble other female bishops in the field.

Confusion species

Yellow-Crowned Bishop (Euplectes afer) is smaller and has a yellow crown above the black face. Yellow Bishop (Euplectes capensis) is larger, with yellow shoulders and a yellow rump but a black mantle. Yellow-Mantled Widowbird (Euplectes macroura) also has a yellow mantle, but also yellow shoulders and a clearly longer tail, and does not share the same dry habitat in western Angola. In the female, range and the company of males help most.

Habitat

Dry savanna with bushes and tall grass, thorn scrub, grassland on the coastal plain and escarpment slopes, and fields and fallow land. It breeds in the rainy season; outside it, it forms small flocks.

Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.

Range and movements

A near-endemic of western Angola, from the coastal plain around Luanda and Bengo south through Cuanza Sul and Benguela into western Huíla, mainly below about 1,000 m. Elsewhere only on São Tomé, where it may have been introduced by people. There are no records elsewhere in the region.

Resident
dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

Density map from the occurrence records of GBIF (2006-09-01 – 2026-08-31), counted per 0.7° grid cell and per month and divided by all bird records in that same cell — so the number of birdwatchers does not shape the picture. Colour depth follows that share and fades out gradually, so the map does not follow national borders. Country outlines: Natural Earth (public domain).

How and when to look

Best in the rainy season, December to April, along the coast road and the roads up the escarpment in Cuanza Sul and Benguela, where singing males perch on bushes along verges and fields.

Conservation status

Not threatened; locally common within its small range and tolerant of farmland, but little studied.

Scientific name

Euplectes aureus | (Gmelin, 1789)

Gmelin described the species in 1789 as Loxia aurea; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Euplectes was introduced in 1829 by Swainson. Euplectes joins Greek eu 'fine, good' to New Latin plectes 'weaver'. aureus is Latin for 'golden' — for the male's golden-yellow back. The specimen the first description was based on came from Benguela, Angola.