Gray-eyed shrike
| Gray-eyed shrike | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Laniarius willardi | ||||||||||||
| Voelker & Gnoske , 2010 |
The gray-eyed shrike ( Laniarius willardi ) is a little researched songbird species from the family of the bush shrike (Malaconotidae). It was discovered in 1997 in the Albertine Rift in southwest Uganda and scientifically described in 2010. The species name honors the American ornithologist David Willard from the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.
features
The gray-eyed shrike reaches a size of 18 to 19 cm and a weight of 40 to 45 g. The entire plumage is black with a slight iridescence. The iris is gray to blue-gray. The beak and legs are black. It differs from the very similar black shrike ( Laniarius poensis ) by its blue-gray (not blue-black) eyes and from all other black shrike species also by its eye color. It also differs from the black shrike ( Laniarius funebris ) and the Fuelleborn shrike ( Laniarius fuelleborni ) by its blacker (less dark gray) plumage. The sexes are similar. The juvenile birds have not yet been described. There is also no information about the utterances.
distribution and habitat
The gray-eyed shrike was discovered near Nteko on the lower eastern slopes of the Albertine Rift in southwest Uganda. It is also found in the Kibira National Park in northwest Burundi and probably in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (west of Lake Albert and Lake Eduard and northwest of Lake Tanganyika ) and in Rwanda . It lives in forests that are dominated by the Parinari excelsa species from the golden plum family (Chrysobalanaceae). Its habitat is in the lower mountain belt at altitudes between 1600 and 1900 m.
Way of life
So far, no information is available about the feeding and reproductive behavior of the gray-eyed shrike. Females ready to breed were observed in May and August.
status
The gray-eyed shrike is currently not recorded by the IUCN . It is described as rare and is likely to be endangered by habitat loss. In the Albertine Rift region only a few forests survive below 2000 m.
literature
- Jon Fjeldså : Willard's Boubou. In: Josep del Hoyo , Andrew Elliott, Jordi Sargatal , David A. Christie (Eds.): Handbook of the Birds of the World: New Species and Global Index. Lynx edicions, 2013, ISBN 978-84-96553-88-0 , p. 222.
- Voelker, G., Outlaw, RK, Reddy, S., Tobler, M., Bates, JM, Hackett, SJ, Kahindo, C., Marks, BD, Peterhans, JCK & Gnoske, TP (2010) A new species of boubou (Malaconotidae: Laniarius) from the Albertine Rift . Auk 127 (3): p. 678-689.
- Jochen Martens & Norbert Bahr: Documentation of new bird taxa, 6 - report for 2010 . Vogelwarte 50, 2012: p. 177-196