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Yellow-Rumped Tinkerbird | Pogoniulus bilineatus
Geelstuitketellapper | Barbudito Culigualdo
The Yellow-Rumped Tinkerbird is a small black-and-white barbet with a golden-yellow rump, a characteristic inhabitant of forests in the east of the region. Its monotonous groups of tinking notes are part of the standing soundscape of coastal and montane forest, but the bird itself is hard to find.
Voice
Groups of four to six low, resonant notes, tonk-tonk-tonk-tonk, each repeated after a short pause, at times for hours on end; lower and more broken than the continuous series of Southern Red-fronted and Yellow-Fronted Tinkerbirds. Also a fast, dry trill.
Recording: JJSUN — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
About 10 cm, compact with a short tail and a small black bill. Upperparts glossy black with a golden-yellow rump patch and yellow edges to the flight feathers and coverts. The face is black with two white stripes: a narrow supercilium and a broader stripe from the bill base below the eye. Throat whitish, breast and belly pale grey with an olive-yellow wash on the flanks. The sexes are alike; juveniles have a pale bill base and a duller rump.
Confusion species
Southern Red-Fronted Tinkerbird (Pogoniulus pusillus) and Yellow-Fronted Tinkerbird (Pogoniulus chrysoconus) have a red and a yellow forehead patch respectively and a yellow-streaked back. Moustached Tinkerbird (Pogoniulus leucomystax) of Malawi's montane forests is olive-green above without a black back. In Angola, Western Tinkerbird (Pogoniulus coryphaea) has a yellow central stripe over crown and back, and in northern Angola Yellow-Throated Tinkerbird (Pogoniulus subsulphureus) has yellow face stripes and a yellow throat.
Habitat
Evergreen forest: coastal and lowland forest, montane forest, riverine forest and dense thickets with tall trees, also large gardens bordering forest. It lives mainly in the middle and upper strata and eats many mistletoe berries, dispersing their seeds, supplemented with insects. It excavates its own nest hole in a dead branch.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
The east and north of the region: the coastal forests of the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, Eswatini, the escarpment forests of Mpumalanga and Limpopo, Mozambique, the eastern highlands of Zimbabwe, Malawi, northern and eastern Zambia and northern and western Angola. Beyond the region over much of tropical Africa, from Senegal to Ethiopia and south through East Africa.
- 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
In forest, follow the tinking groups, then check mistletoe clumps and bare branches in the canopy. The bird often sits stock-still while calling, turning only its head, which makes it hard to locate. Good sites are the coastal forests of KwaZulu-Natal and the forests around Magoebaskloof.
Conservation status
Not threatened and common in suitable forest. Locally sensitive to clearing of coastal and montane forest, but it persists in secondary forest and well-wooded gardens.
Scientific name
Pogoniulus bilineatus | (Sundevall, 1850)
Sundevall described the species in 1850 as Megalaema bilineata; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Pogoniulus was introduced in 1842 by De Lafresnaye. Pogoniulus is a diminutive of Pogonias, from the Greek pōgōnias, 'bearded' — thus 'little barbet', fitting for these smallest barbets. bilineatus is Latin for 'two-lined' — for the two white stripes on each side of the head. The specimen the first description was based on came from Umlazi River, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.