All species › Woodpeckers and allies › African barbets › White-Eared Barbet
White-Eared Barbet | Stactolaema leucotis
Witoorbaardvogel | Barbudo Orejiblanco Común
The White-Eared Barbet is a dark brown, sociable barbet of the eastern coastal forests, recognised by the white stripe behind the eye and the white belly. Small groups like to sit together on the bare top of a dead tree at the forest edge and make a good deal of noise there.
Voice
A high, rapidly repeated tchee-tchee-tchee or a rattling tree-tree, often by the whole group at once, and a harsh grunting call. Less regular and less musical than the calls of most other barbets.
Recording: Peter Ericsson — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
About 17 cm, compact, with a stout black bill. Head, breast, back and wings are dark chocolate-brown to blackish; a conspicuous white stripe runs from behind the eye to the side of the neck. Belly, undertail coverts and rump are white, so that the bird looks sharply two-toned from below. The sexes are alike; juveniles are duller brown.
Confusion species
Whyte's Barbet (Stactolaema whytii) is browner, with a pale wing patch, pale spotting on the head and no clean-cut white belly; the two barely overlap. Green Barbet (Cryptolybia olivacea) is olive-green with no white. Black-Collared Barbet (Lybius torquatus) has a red face.
Habitat
Edges and clearings of coastal, lowland and riverine forest, fig groves in moist savanna, and gardens or plantations near forest. It feeds mainly on fruit, especially figs, as well as insects. It breeds cooperatively in cavities excavated in dead branches, and the group also roosts together in a hole.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
The east of the region: the coast and lowland forests of KwaZulu-Natal (south to about the Eastern Cape border), Eswatini, the lowveld and escarpment forests of Mpumalanga and Limpopo, Mozambique, eastern Zimbabwe and southern Malawi. Beyond the region along the east coast of Tanzania and Kenya.
- 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
Scan the edge of coastal forest in KwaZulu-Natal, for example in iSimangaliso and around Durban, for dead treetops: groups often sit there in view for long periods. Fruiting fig trees draw them in alongside other fruit-eating birds.
Conservation status
Not threatened and locally common in suitable forest. Loss of coastal forest to development and agriculture has fragmented its range in South Africa, but the species also uses gardens and plantations with old trees.
Scientific name
Stactolaema leucotis | (Sundevall, 1850)
Sundevall described the species in 1850 as Megalaema leucotis; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Stactolaema was introduced in 1870 by Marshall & Marshall. Stactolaema comes from the Greek staktos, 'dripping', and laimos, 'throat' — for the streaked, as if tear-stained throat and breast of the type species. leucotis is Greek, from leukos, 'white', and ous, genitive ōtos, 'ear' — for the white stripe behind the eye. The specimen the first description was based on came from KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.