All species › Passerines › Chats and flycatchers › Grey-Winged Robin-Chat
Grey-Winged Robin-Chat | Sheppardia polioptera
Grijsvleugeljanfrederik | Akelat Aligrís
The Grey-Winged Robin-Chat is a skulking robin of dense gallery forest that within the region occurs only at the southern edge of its range, in north-western Zambia and northern and eastern Angola. Its song includes extensive mimicry of other bird species.
Voice
The song is loud, rich and very varied, with much mimicry of other forest birds, alternating with its own clear whistles; often sung in long sequences at dawn and dusk. The alarm is a dry, rattling trrrt and a harsh tchak. The mimicry makes the song its best feature.
No recording with a suitable Creative Commons licence is available for this species yet.
Identification
A medium-sized akalat of 14 to 15 cm. Crown and nape are slate-grey, with a white supercilium starting above the eye and a dark eye-stripe. The back is olive-brown, the wing coverts and the edges of the flight feathers grey. Face, throat and breast are warm orange, the belly whitish and the flanks olive; the tail is rufous-brown. Sexes alike. Juveniles are dark brown with buff spots. It lives low in dense undergrowth and seldom comes into the open.
Confusion species
Bocage's Akalat (Sheppardia bocagei) lacks the grey crown, white supercilium and grey wing edges, and its song consists of pure whistles without mimicry. White-Browed Robin-Chat (Cossypha heuglini) is larger, with a black head, broad white supercilium and orange tail with dark centre; it is also a mimic, but sings from higher perches. A voice rapidly imitating other species from dense gallery forest at Mwinilunga is probably this species.
Habitat
Dense undergrowth of evergreen gallery forest and swamp forest along rivers and streams, and the edges of moist lowland forest, within the region mostly between 1100 and 1400 m. Forages on the ground and low in the undergrowth for insects.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
In Zambia only in the north-west, in the gallery forests of Mwinilunga District; in Angola in the north and north-east (Lunda and surroundings). Records are scarce and its status in the region is still poorly known; in parts of East Africa the species migrates outside the breeding season. Beyond the region scattered from Sierra Leone to South Sudan, Uganda, western Kenya and north-western Tanzania.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Search the gallery forests around Mwinilunga, especially at dawn and dusk when the bird sings. Listen for a stream of imitations from dense undergrowth along a stream and then sit quietly; it sometimes comes briefly onto a low branch.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The species has a large range outside the region. In Zambia and Angola its habitat is limited to fragmented gallery forests, which are declining through logging, cultivation along streams and fire.
Scientific name
Sheppardia polioptera | (Reichenow, 1892)
Reichenow described the species in 1892 as Cossypha polioptera; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Sheppardia was introduced in 1909 by Haagner. Sheppardia honours P. A. Sheppard, a farmer and bird collector near Beira in Mozambique, who found the first specimen of East Coast Akalat. polioptera comes from the Greek polios, 'grey', and pteron, 'wing' — for the greyish wings. The specimen the first description was based on came from Bukoba on Lake Victoria, Tanzania.