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Yellow-Mantled Weaver | Ploceus tricolor
Driekleurwever | Tejedor Tricolor
The Yellow-Mantled Weaver is a striking canopy weaver of the Central African rainforest, occurring within the region only in northern Angola. It is black and deep chestnut, with a bright yellow band across the upper back. It lives high in the trees, often in mixed flocks, and is harder to see than its bright colours suggest.
Voice
A series of high, thin, sizzling notes mixed with a grating chatter; the call is a sharp chip or a dry chk. Often the first sign of its presence in the canopy, before the bird shows itself.
Recording: GABRIEL LEITE — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
16–18 cm; a robust, long-tailed forest weaver with a heavy black bill. Head, throat, wings and tail are black; a broad bright yellow crescent or band crosses the upper back, most obvious in flight and from behind. The underparts are deep chestnut to chestnut-red. The eye is reddish and the legs are dark. The sexes are very similar; the female is slightly duller. Juveniles are duller brown, with a less bright yellow back band and a paler bill. It climbs and searches like a nuthatch along branches and among leaves and creepers.
Confusion species
Dark-Backed Weaver (Ploceus bicolor) is also a canopy weaver with dark upperparts, but has yellow underparts and no yellow back band. Crested Malimbe (Malimbus malimbicus) and Red-Headed Malimbe (Malimbus rubricollis) are black with red on the head and lack the chestnut underparts and yellow back band. The male Vieillot's Black Weaver (Ploceus nigerrimus) is wholly black with a yellow eye and breeds in open colonies in villages. The combination of black head, yellow back band and chestnut belly is unique.
Habitat
Tall rainforest, gallery forest and old secondary forest with tall trees, where it forages in the canopy and among creepers; it sometimes comes lower at forest edges and clearings. It often joins mixed foraging flocks. It eats mainly insects, also fruit and nectar. It breeds solitarily or in small groups; the nest hangs high from the tip of a branch or creeper.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Within the region only in northern Angola, in the forests of Cabinda and the northern provinces, south along the forest edges of the escarpment. Beyond the region through the forest belt of West and Central Africa, from Sierra Leone to western Uganda and southern DR Congo.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In tall forest in northern Angola, look for mixed flocks in the canopy and listen for thin, sizzling calls. The yellow back band is the best feature when the bird is seen from above or in flight; from below the contrast between black throat and chestnut belly stands out. A telescope or good binoculars are almost indispensable.
Conservation status
Not threatened; widespread in the Central African rainforest. Locally sensitive to logging, especially at the margins of its range such as in Angola.
Scientific name
Ploceus tricolor | (Hartlaub, 1854)
Hartlaub described the species in 1854 as Hyphantornis tricolor; 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. tricolor is Latin for 'three-coloured' — for the male's black, yellow and chestnut. The specimen the first description was based on came from Sierra Leone.