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Spot-Throat | Modulatrix stictigula
Vlekkeellijster | Tordina de Anteojos
The Spot-Throat is a secretive denizen of the forest floor in East Africa's montane forests, looking like something between a thrush and a babbler. It belongs to the small African family Modulatricidae. Within this guide's region it occurs only in the Masuku Mountains of far northern Malawi.
Voice
Its song is thrush-like: a varied but distinctive series of shrill whistles and slurs. The call is a sweet, upslurred 'seeuuiit', and when alarmed it gives a scratchy note. It is heard far more often than it is seen.
Recording: isaac kilusu — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
A medium-sized, long-tailed songbird with olive-brown upperparts and rusty underparts. Its most eye-catching feature is a bold, dull blue-grey eye-ring. The finely spotted throat gives the species its name. The sexes look alike. Because it almost always stays in dark undergrowth, views tend to be brief and in poor light.
Confusion species
In the montane forests of northern Malawi it can be confused with other ground-dwelling forest birds. Sharpe's Akalat (Sheppardia sharpei) is smaller and shorter-tailed, with a plain orange-buff throat and breast and no blue-grey eye-ring. Orange Ground Thrush (Geokichla gurneyi) has bright orange underparts, white wing bars and a bold face pattern. White-Chested Alethe (Chamaetylas fuelleborni) has clean white underparts. Its relative the Dapple-throat (Arcanator orostruthus) has a scaled rather than spotted throat and does not occur alongside it in this region.
Habitat
Humid montane forest with dense undergrowth, roughly between 900 and 2,700 m. It feeds on the ground, flicking and tossing leaf litter aside in search of insects, and also takes berries. It sometimes follows driver-ant swarms to catch the insects they flush.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
The Spot-Throat is a true edge-of-range species for this guide. Most of its range lies in the montane forests of north-eastern Tanzania (Usambara and Nguru Mountains) and eastern Tanzania (Ukaguru Mountains). Only the southernmost tip of this East African range reaches our region: the Masuku Mountains (Misuku Hills) of northern Malawi, close to the Tanzanian border. It occurs nowhere else in southern Africa.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In Malawi it can be found only in the forest reserves of the Misuku Hills. Listen at dawn for the shrill whistled song from the forest floor. Then wait quietly beside a gap in the undergrowth, because the bird often shows itself only after some patience. Also check around driver-ant swarms.
Conservation status
Globally it is listed as Least Concern (LC) on the IUCN Red List. However, its habitat consists of scattered patches of montane forest. In Malawi the population is small and confined to a few forest reserves, which leaves it vulnerable to logging and forest loss.
Scientific name
Modulatrix stictigula | (Reichenow, 1906)
Reichenow described the species in 1906 as Turdinus stictigula; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Modulatrix was introduced in 1952 by Ripley. Modulatrix is Latin for 'songstress' or 'female musician', from modulari, 'to sing melodiously, to make music'. Ripley coined the name in 1952, presumably with the bird's rich, varied song in mind. stictigula combines Greek stiktos, 'spotted, dappled', with Latin gula, 'throat': 'spot-throated', after the species' finely spotted throat. The specimen the first description was based on came from Mbaramo, Usambara.