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Swee Waxbill | Coccopygia melanotis
Groenrugastrild | Estrilda Ventrigualda Meridional
The Swee Waxbill is a tiny olive-green estrildid with a grey head, a fiery red rump and a two-toned bill, living in pairs and small parties along forest edges and in gardens in the east of South Africa. Its soft swee-swee call gave it its name.
Voice
A soft, high, whistled swee-swee or swee-ee, often in flight and as a contact call between partners. The song is a thin, high series of the same notes with a small trill.
Recording: Lynette Rudman — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
9–10 cm. Head and nape are soft grey, back and wings olive-green, rump and uppertail-coverts bright scarlet and tail black. The upper mandible is black, the lower red. The male has a black face: lores, cheeks and chin are black. The female lacks the black and has a pale grey face. The breast is pale grey, the belly and undertail-coverts pale yellowish-buff. Juveniles are duller, without a black face, and have an all-black bill.
Confusion species
Yellow-Bellied Waxbill (Coccopygia quartinia) of eastern Zimbabwe and further north lacks a black face in both sexes and has a clearly yellower belly; the species do not overlap. Black-Faced Waxbill (Brunhilda erythronotos) also has a black face and red on the rump, but is grey-brown with fine barring and pinkish-red flanks and lives in dry thornveld in the west. Common Waxbill (Estrilda astrild) has a red eye-stripe and a red bill and lacks the red rump.
Habitat
Edges of Afromontane and riverine forest, rank grassy margins, scrub in ravines, plantations and well-wooded gardens, from sea level high into the mountains. It feeds in pairs or parties on the ground and on grass heads for small seeds and readily visits feeders. The nest is a ball of grass high in a shrub or tree.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Endemic to the south-east of the region: South Africa from the southern Cape east through the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal to Mpumalanga, the eastern Free State and the Limpopo escarpment, also Eswatini and the margins of Lesotho. Older literature, including Roberts, also included the birds of eastern Zimbabwe and Mozambique in this species; these are now assigned to Yellow-Bellied Waxbill.
- Resident
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Easiest in well-wooded gardens and at forest edges in KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga and the Eastern Cape: listen for the soft swee-swee and look low in the grassy margin. At a feeder with fine seed male and female can be compared side by side, when the black face is obvious.
Conservation status
Not threatened; common within its range and benefits from gardens and forest edges. Loss of forest edges and overgrazing of grassy margins can cause local declines.
Scientific name
Coccopygia melanotis | (Temminck, 1823)
Temminck described the species in 1823 as Fringilla melanotis; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Coccopygia was introduced in 1862 by Reichenbach. Coccopygia comes from the Greek kokkos, 'scarlet', and -pugios, '-rumped' — for the red rump of these waxbills. melanotis comes from the Greek melas, 'black', and ous, ōtos, 'ear' — for the male's black cheeks. The specimen the first description was based on came from Eastern Cape, South Africa.