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Protea Canary | Crithagra leucoptera
Witbandkanarie | Serín de las Proteas
The Protea Canary is an endemic, inconspicuously brown canary of the mountain fynbos of the Western Cape, with a black chin, a pale bill and two thin white wingbars. It lives mainly on the seeds of sugarbushes (Protea) and is scarcer and shyer than most other canaries.
Voice
A rich, clear and varied song of whistled and rolling notes, with imitations of other birds, from the top of a sugarbush. The call is a soft tsheep and a rising tree-lee-loo.
Recording: Tony — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
15–16 cm. Plain dark grey-brown above with faint streaking on the crown; the underparts are paler grey-brown and whitish on the belly. A small black chin patch is bordered by a white throat. Two thin white wingbars are easy to see on perched birds. The bill is fairly heavy and pale pink to horn. There is no yellow rump. The sexes are alike; juveniles are finely streaked and lack the black chin.
Confusion species
The Streaky-Headed Seedeater (Crithagra gularis), found in the east of the range, has a broad white supercilium, no black chin and no wingbars. The White-Throated Canary (Crithagra albogularis), which may overlap in the dry north of the range, has a yellow-green rump, a very heavy bill and no black chin. Females of the Cape Canary (Serinus canicollis) and the Cape Siskin (Crithagra totta) are greener and show yellow in wing or tail. Pale bill, black chin and white wingbars together are decisive.
Habitat
Mountain fynbos with dense stands of tall sugarbushes, especially on cooler slopes, dense scrub in ravines and along streams, and fynbos after fire once mature sugarbushes have grown back. It feeds mainly on seeds from old sugarbush heads, and also on buds, flowers, fruit and insects.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Endemic to the region: the mountains of the Western Cape, from the Cederberg through the Cape Fold Belt to the Swartberg and Kammanassie, and further east into the west of the Eastern Cape (Baviaanskloof, Kouga). Nowhere else.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Search unburnt mountain fynbos with tall sugarbushes, for example in the Cederberg, on Paarl Mountain or in the Swartberg. The bird often sits low and hidden; it is best found by listening for the song and then waiting at sugarbushes with old seed heads. After large fires it may vanish from an area for years.
Conservation status
Near Threatened. The species has a small range and depends on mature sugarbushes; too frequent fires, the spread of orchards and vineyards and invasive alien trees degrade its habitat. Climate change may shrink the range further.
Scientific name
Crithagra leucoptera | Sharpe, 1871
Sharpe described the species in 1871 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Crithagra was introduced in 1827 by Swainson. Crithagra comes from the Greek krithē, 'barley', and agra, 'hunting' — a 'barley hunter', for the seed-eating diet of these canaries and seedeaters. leucoptera comes from the Greek leukos, 'white', and pteron, 'wing' — for the two white wing bars. The specimen the first description was based on came from Paarl, Western Cape, South Africa.