White-Starred Robin | Pogonocichla stellata

Voice

The song is a soft, repeated two-note whistle, too-twee or choo-chee, which is hard to locate and often kept up for a long time; sometimes with soft, longer phrases. The alarm is a dry, clicking tsik or zit, and at dusk a soft, frog-like grunt.

Identification

16 cm, a fairly upright robin with a round head and long legs. The adult has a slate-grey to blue-grey head, olive-green back and wings and bright yellow underparts. The tail is yellow with black central feathers and a black terminal band, so that two yellow panels flash as it flies off. A small white spot in front of the eye and a white spot in the centre of the lower throat are raised in display and alarm. The sexes are alike. Juveniles are dark olive-brown with yellowish spots; immatures are dull olive-green above and dirty yellow below for months, without a grey head. It droops its wings and spreads its tail.

Confusion species

Swynnerton's Robin Swynnertonia swynnertoni is smaller, with an orange throat and breast, a white crescent edged black below and a grey tail without yellow; it occurs only in eastern Zimbabwe, central Mozambique and Tanzania. Yellow-Breasted Apalis Apalis flavida is much smaller and slimmer, with a long tail and a white throat, and lives higher in the foliage. Immature White-Starred Robins may suggest a greenbul, but the yellow tail sides and robin-like behaviour low near the ground are distinctive.

Habitat

The lower and middle strata of moist evergreen forest, from montane forest and forested ravines to coastal and lowland forest, and dense thickets along forest edges; also in old gardens and plantations bordering indigenous forest. It feeds on insects taken on or just above the forest floor, often in short sallies from a low twig, and sometimes follows columns of driver ants. The nest is a domed structure of moss and leaves on the ground, against a bank or among roots.

Range and movements

In South Africa in the forests of the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga and the Limpopo escarpment, and further in Eswatini, the eastern highlands of Zimbabwe and the montane forests of Mozambique and Malawi; in Zambia only in the north-east, as on the Nyika and the Mafinga Hills. Beyond the region in the montane forests of East Africa to Kenya, Uganda, eastern Congo and South Sudan.

• 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

Walk quietly along forest paths in the early morning in places such as Karkloof, Woodbush or the Bvumba and listen for the two-note whistle that seems to come from all sides. Stand still and wait: the bird often comes inquisitively to a low twig and then shows its yellow tail sides. In winter, from May to August, many birds in South Africa move to lower-lying forests and can then be seen in coastal forest and gardens.

Conservation status

Not threatened. Widespread and locally numerous in suitable forest. Logging and fragmentation of evergreen forest, especially of the low-lying winter forests, reduce habitat locally, but the species also uses older plantations with undergrowth.

Scientific name

Pogonocichla stellata | (Vieillot, 1818)

Vieillot described the species in 1818 as Muscicapa stellata; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Pogonocichla was introduced in 1847 by Cabanis. Pogonocichla comes from the Greek pōgōn, 'beard', and kikhlē, 'thrush' — a 'bearded thrush', for the white spots on the throat and face. stellata is Latin for 'starred' — for the white star-like spots in front of the eye and on the throat. The specimen the first description was based on came from Plettenberg Bay, South Africa.