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Gurney's Sugarbird | Promerops gurneyi
Gurneys suikervogel | Mielero Abejaruco de Gurney
Gurney's Sugarbird is the eastern counterpart of the Cape Sugarbird: a long-tailed nectar-feeder with a rufous crown and breast that lives in the protea stands of the eastern escarpment, the Drakensberg and the eastern highlands of Zimbabwe. Its occurrence is tightly bound to flowering proteas and is therefore fragmented.
Voice
A high, clear song of three or four ascending notes, the last repeated several times, tsee-tsoo-tswee-tswee-tswee, from a protea bush or dead branch. The call is a short chit; in territorial disputes a tearing krrr, like ripping cloth.
Recording: Jenny Sharland — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
A slender bird of 23 to 29 cm, much of it tail; the male has the longest tail. Crown and nape are rufous, the face greyish-brown with a white malar stripe along the throat, and the breast and flanks bright rufous. The back is olive-grey with faint streaking, the belly dull white and the undertail coverts bright yellow. The bill is long, thin and decurved. The female has a shorter tail and is duller. Juveniles are drabber, with greenish undertail coverts. Flight is undulating with the tail streaming behind; males clap their wings in display flight.
Confusion species
Cape Sugarbird (Promerops cafer) of the fynbos has a much longer tail in the male, a brown rather than rufous crown and a white throat with a brown-barred breast; the two species do not overlap. Female Malachite Sunbird (Nectarinia famosa) is smaller, plain olive-grey with no rufous and no long tail, and visits the same proteas and aloes.
Habitat
Protea stands on mountain slopes in montane grassland, especially with silver sugarbush (Protea roupelliae) and common sugarbush (Protea caffra), at 1000 to 2500 m. Outside the protea flowering it seeks out flowering aloes, including in gardens and villages. It lives on nectar and on insects caught in flowers or in the air, and is an important pollinator of these proteas.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Endemic to eastern southern Africa. In South Africa along the escarpment of Limpopo and Mpumalanga (Wolkberg, Haenertsburg, Graskop, Dullstroom), in the Drakensberg of KwaZulu-Natal and the eastern Free State, and locally in the north-eastern Eastern Cape; also in Lesotho and the highlands of Eswatini. A separate subspecies, ardens, lives in the eastern highlands of Zimbabwe (Nyanga, Bvumba, Chimanimani) and adjacent Mozambique. It occurs nowhere outside this region.
- Resident
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Look for it in flowering protea stands near Dullstroom and Verloren Vallei, on the slopes around Graskop and in the Drakensberg, or in Nyanga National Park in Zimbabwe. The proteas flower mainly from February to July; outside that period a visit to flowering aloes in winter pays off. The rufous breast shield and yellow undertail show well against the light.
Conservation status
Near Threatened. The species depends on fragmented protea stands, which are lost to afforestation with pines and eucalypts, too frequent or too hot fires and the conversion of grassland to cropland. After a large fire the birds may have to leave an area for years, until the proteas flower again.
Scientific name
Promerops gurneyi | Verreaux, 1871
Verreaux described the species in 1871 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Promerops was introduced in 1760 by Brisson. Promerops comes from the Greek pro, 'resembling', and merops, 'bee-eater' — for a superficial resemblance in bill shape to bee-eaters, although sugarbirds are not related to them. gurneyi honours the English banker and ornithologist John Henry Gurney Sr. (1819–1890), an authority on South African birds of prey. The specimen the first description was based on came from Natal (KwaZulu-Natal), South Africa.