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Slender-Billed Weaver | Ploceus pelzelni
Dunbekwever | Tejedor de Pelzeln
The Slender-Billed Weaver is a small, finely built weaver of lake shores, swamps and gardens near water. With its thin, pointed bill and habit of clambering through foliage like a warbler, it differs from most seed-eating weavers.
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Voice
A soft, quick, thin twittering followed by a short sizzling roll, and fine chip calls. Much less loud than the large colonial weavers.
Recording: James Bradley — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
11–12 cm, small and slim, with a strikingly thin, pointed black bill and a dark eye. The male is bright yellow with a black mask over face, chin and throat and an olive-green back and crown. The female lacks the black: olive-green above, yellow below, with a paler bill. The sexes wear the same plumage all year; juveniles resemble the female but are duller.
Confusion species
Village Weaver (Ploceus cucullatus) is much larger, with a heavy bill, a red eye and a black-blotched back. Black-Necked Weaver (Ploceus nigricollis) is larger and heavier-billed, with a pale eye and a yellow forehead and face crossed only by a narrow black eyestripe. The male Orange Weaver (Ploceus aurantius) is orange-yellow without a black mask and has a pale bill. Small size and the thin bill are always the first clue.
Habitat
Shores of lakes, rivers and swamps, often with papyrus, reeds or palms, and also gardens, parks and villages close to water; in Angola also coastal lowland with riverine growth. It nests solitarily or in small groups, with a small, finely woven nest with a short entrance tube, often slung from a palm frond or a branch over water. It eats mainly insects, which it gleans from foliage.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Within the region in north-western Angola (Cabinda, Luanda, Bengo, Cuanza Norte and Cuanza Sul, Uíge, Benguela) and in northern Zambia along the shore of Lake Mweru near Nchelenge. Beyond the region in West Africa from Ghana to Cameroon, in the Congo Basin and in the Lake Victoria basin (Uganda, western Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, north-western Tanzania).
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In Zambia look along the vegetated shores of Lake Mweru around Nchelenge, in Angola in gardens and riverside growth around Luanda and along the rivers of the north-west. Watch for a small yellow weaver moving through palm fronds and bushes like a warbler.
Conservation status
Not threatened; common over much of its range outside the region. Within the region it is confined to the extreme northern edge, where it is locally fairly common.
Scientific name
Ploceus pelzelni | (Hartlaub, 1887)
Hartlaub described the species in 1887 as Sitagra pelzelni; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Ploceus was introduced in 1816 by Cuvier, GLCFD. Ploceus comes from the Greek plokeus, 'plaiter, weaver', for the tightly woven, ball-shaped nest that gives weavers their name. pelzelni honours the Austrian ornithologist August von Pelzeln (1825–1891), curator at the natural history museum in Vienna. The specimen the first description was based on came from Magungo, near the north end of Lake Albert (Uganda).