Gosling fine singer
| Gosling fine singer | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Apalis goslingi | ||||||||||||
| Alexander , 1908 |
The Gosling apalis ( Apalis goslingi ) is a Singvogelart of the genus apalis ( Apalis ) in the family of Halmsängerartigen (Cisticolidae). The art epithet honors the British army officer and naturalist George Bennett Gosling, who was a member of Boyd Alexander's expedition from the Niger to the Nile between 1904 and 1906 .
features
The gosling fine singer is a rather small, gray fine singer with a short, mainly dark brownish-gray tail. It reaches a length of 11 cm. In the male, the skull and the upper side are gray and, with the exception of the rump, tinted brown. The rump has a slightly lighter gray color. The wing feathers and the tail are dark gray. The very narrow tips of the tail feathers are yellow-brown. The reins and cheeks are dark gray. The throat is creamy white. The underside is light gray, lighter in the middle of the abdomen and on the rump. The under wing-coverts and the inner lobes of the arm-wings and the inner hand-wings are white at the basal end. The iris is light yellow or red. The beak is black. The legs are yellowish pink. The female is similar to the male, but has a lighter face. The juvenile birds are olive-green on the upper side. With them, the throat is light yellow, the underside light olive yellow, the beak and the eyes greenish-gray and the legs yellowish.
Vocalizations
The singing consists of a series of six to ten “twit” tones or a faster “twit-it-it-it-it…”.
Distribution area
The distribution area extends from southern Cameroon , over the south-east Central African Republic , north-east Gabon , the north Republic of the Congo , the Democratic Republic of the Congo to north-east Angola .
habitat
The gosling singer is a resident of the Guinea-Congo forest biome . It occurs in lowland forests along rivers, in forest edges and in secondary forests. In the Republic of the Congo, he prefers forests along the main rivers where the trees soar into the sunlight.
Eating behavior
The diet consists of insects and other invertebrates, including beetles, grasshoppers , small terrestrials , caterpillars, and spiders. The gosling singer picks up its prey from the vegetation.
Reproductive behavior
The breeding season probably extends from April to August in the Republic of the Congo and from January to February in Cameroon. The Gosling fine singer is a resident bird that probably remains in the same location all year round. The 60 to 80 m long river bank areas are jointly defended by the couples.
status
The Gosling fine singer is classified by the IUCN as "not endangered" ( least concern ). It has a distribution area of over 20,000 km 2 . There is no information about the population, but the ornithologist Emil K. Urban described it as infrequent to frequent in 1997.
literature
- Peter Ryan: Family Cisticolidae (Cisticolas and allies). In: J. Del Hoyo, A. Elliott, DA Christie: Handbook of the Birds of the World. Volume 11: Old World Flycatchers to Old World Warblers. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona 2006, ISBN 84-96553-06-X , p. 479.
Web links
- Apalis goslingi inthe IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2015.2. Listed by: BirdLife International, 2012. Retrieved September 1, 2015.
Individual evidence
- ^ JA Jobling: Key to Scientific Names in Ornithology. In: J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, DA Christie, E. de Juana (Eds.): Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona 2015.
- ^ EK Urban, CH Fry, S. Keith: The Birds of Africa. Thrushes to puffback flycatchers. Vol. 5, Academic Press, London 1997.