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Orange Ground Thrush | Geokichla gurneyi
Gurneys lijster | Zorzal de Gurney
The Orange Ground Thrush is a secretive ground thrush of montane and mid-altitude mist forest, with warm orange underparts and white wing bars. It is heard far more often than seen: the whistled song rings out from the dark forest at dawn and dusk.
Voice
The song is a long, sweet series of varied whistled phrases, thrush-like but higher and clearer than that of Olive Thrush, with repetitions and sometimes mimicry, mainly at dawn and dusk. The call is a thin, high tseep.
Recording: Abdulrahman Adam — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
22–23 cm. Upperparts olive-brown to slaty brown, the wings with two white bars formed by the tips of the coverts. Throat, breast and flanks plain warm orange, belly and undertail coverts white. A narrow white eye-ring and sometimes a dark bar through the ear coverts. In flight the underwing shows a broad black-and-white band. Bill blackish, legs pink. The sexes are alike. Juveniles have brown spotting on the orange breast and pale streaks on the back.
Confusion species
Spotted Ground Thrush (Geokichla guttata) shares the white wing bars but is white with black spots below and has a black-and-white head pattern; it lives mainly in coastal lowland forest. Olive Thrush (Turdus olivaceus) occurs in the same forests but has an orange bill, a grey-brown breast with orange only on belly and flanks, and no wing bars; it also forages in the open and in gardens.
Habitat
Moist montane and mid-altitude forest with a closed canopy and an open, shaded floor, often in ravines and along streams. Forages on the ground among leaves for insects, snails and worms and sings from a mid-level branch. In winter some birds descend to lower-lying and coastal forest.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Scattered through the Afromontane forest belts of the east of the region: in South Africa from the Eastern Cape (Amatola) through KwaZulu-Natal to Mpumalanga and Limpopo (Woodbush, Soutpansberg), and in Eswatini, the Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe (Nyanga, Vumba, Chimanimani), the mountains of central and northern Mozambique (including Gorongosa and Namuli), Malawi (Mulanje, Zomba, Viphya, Nyika) and north-eastern Zambia; an isolated population in the highlands of western Angola. Beyond, north to Tanzania, Kenya and eastern DR Congo.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
At dusk, listen for the clear whistled song in forests such as Woodbush and Magoebaskloof (Limpopo), Ngome (KwaZulu-Natal) or the Vumba (Zimbabwe). Then sit quietly on a forest path; the bird often comes out to feed on the path or in a clearing and can be seen well for a moment.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Fairly common in suitable forest, but its dependence on montane forest makes it locally vulnerable to forest loss, as in Malawi and central Mozambique, and to disturbance of the forest floor by livestock and logging.
Scientific name
Geokichla gurneyi | (Hartlaub, 1864)
Hartlaub described the species in 1864 as Turdus gurneyi; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Geokichla was introduced in 1836 by Müller. Geokichla combines the Greek gē, 'earth, ground', with kikhlē, 'thrush' — 'ground thrush', for the habit of foraging on the forest floor. gurneyi honours the English banker and ornithologist John Henry Gurney (1819–1890), an authority on African birds of prey. The specimen the first description was based on came from near Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.