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Scaly-Throated Honeyguide | Indicator variegatus
Schubkeelhoningspeurder | Indicador Variegado
The Scaly-Throated Honeyguide is a forest bird more often heard than seen: its long rising trill comes from the canopy without the caller showing itself. It is the size of the Greater Honeyguide but greener, and does not guide people to bees' nests.
Voice
A long, buzzing, rising trill, trrrrrrrrrr-reet, lasting a few seconds, recalling a cricket or a clockwork spring being wound, repeated at intervals of half a minute or more. The sound is ventriloquial and gives little clue to its direction.
Recording: Jonathan Onongo — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
About 19 cm. Upperparts olive-green with fine pale edges; crown and hindneck grey-green and finely spotted. Throat and breast greyish with dense dark spots and scales, merging into paler, olive-washed underparts towards the belly. The bill is short and dark; the outer tail feathers are white with dark tips. Sexes alike; juveniles are plainer, with less distinct throat markings.
Confusion species
Greater Honeyguide (Indicator indicator) is grey-brown rather than green and has plain underparts or, in the male, a black throat. Lesser Honeyguide (Indicator minor) is clearly smaller, with a grey, unspotted throat and a black malar stripe. The scaled throat and breast combined with the olive-green back are decisive.
Habitat
Afromontane forest, riverine forest, coastal forest and dense forest edge, sometimes tall mixed thickets and plantations with old trees. It eats wax and insects. A brood parasite of hole-nesting barbets and woodpeckers, including White-Eared Barbet and Golden-Tailed Woodpecker.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Local in the wooded eastern half: eastern South Africa from the Eastern Cape through KwaZulu-Natal to Mpumalanga and Limpopo, Eswatini, eastern Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia and northern Angola. Beyond the region north to Ethiopia and Somalia and west to Cameroon.
- 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
Home in on the trill in the canopy and search patiently for a quietly perched green bird on a horizontal branch in the mid or upper storey. It often returns to the same calling branch. At bees' nests in hollow trees it sometimes joins other honeyguides at the wax.
Conservation status
Not threatened, but scarce in the south of the region and dependent on indigenous forest. Fragmentation and clearance of forest and riverine forest are the main threats.
Scientific name
Indicator variegatus | Lesson, 1830
Lesson described the species in 1830 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Indicator was introduced in 1815 by Stephens. Indicator is Latin for 'pointer, informer' — for the famous behaviour of the Greater Honeyguide, which leads people to bees' nests. variegatus is Latin for 'variegated, mottled' — for the scaly throat and breast. The specimen the first description was based on came from Africa (not further specified).