Bulletin 331 - South Africa #8 - Part 1 - Bushshrikes, Crows, Monarch Flycatchers, Tit, Hyena, Leopard

I had an amazing 2 week trip to South Africa and scored almost 280 new species of birds as well as fantastic mammals and a few reptiles. My guide Casper Badenhorst was outstanding. You can see his web site here. He can be contacted through the web site or if you want his email it is info@birdingandwildlifesafaris.com. I recommend him highly as he showed me so many rare birds and animals. I will use him again when I go to Southern Africa.

Bushshrikes are an African family of songbirds and not related to those birds we saw previously with names of shrikes, helmetshrikes, or cuckooshrikes. Many of them have peculiar names. There are 49 species in this family and I photographed 9 on this trip.

The 5.5" Brubru (Nilaus afer) has a black head, back, wings and white undersides. There are white stripes above the eye and on the wings. The flanks are rusty.

Brubru

The 9" Southern Boubou (Laniarius ferrugineus) is gray above with the same white line on the wing and is rusty below. This may be a juvenile male, as the book shows the rusty color up to the throat on the adult male. On the female the rusty color is just on the belly.

Southern Boubou - male

The 7" male Black-backed Puffback (Dryoscopus cubla) is black above and pure white below. He has a red eye. On display, he has some white feathers on his rump that can elevate like a puffball. Unfortunately, I did not see him displaying. The female has white above the eye.

Black-backed Puffback

The 9" Black-crowned Tchagra (Tchagra senegalus) is overall gray with rufous wings. The head is striped back and white with the top of the head black. This one supposedly is named for his call tchagra??

Black-crowned Tchagra

The last one with a funny name is the 9" Bokmakierie (Telophorus zeylonus). It is green backed and yellow below with a black bib. Despite the bushshrike family, this bird we always saw on the ground in the open.

Bokmakierie

The last 4 are actually named bushshrikes and are very secretive and hard to find. But the payoff is that they are colorful. The 10" Grey-headed Bushshrike (Malaconotus blanchoti) has a green back and wings, gray head and yellow undersides with and orange on the breast.

Grey-headed Bushshrike

The 8" male Olive Bushshrike (Chlorophoneus olivaceous) is similar but the throat is also orange and he has a black mask. The female lacks the black mask.

Olive Bushshrike - male

The 8" male Orange-breasted Bushshrike (Chlorophoneus sulfureopectus) has yellow above the eye and the brightest orange breast of the group. The female lacks the orange breast.

Orange-breasted Bushshrike - male

Lastly was the toughest of these birds to see as he is a real skulker. We actually had to get out of the vehicle with a ranger to pursue this bird into the forest to get a photo. They normally do not allow you to leave the vehicle due to the danger of big animals. But the pursuit was worth the payoff. The 8" male Gorgeous Bushshrike (Telophorus viridis) is stunning. If you see it, it is an easy ID. It is a target bird for South Africa.

Gorgeous Bushshrike - male

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