Gray-coat shrike
| Gray-coat shrike | ||||||||||||
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Gray-coat shrike |
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| Lanius excubitoroides | ||||||||||||
| Prévost & Des Murs , 1847 |
The gray-coat shrike ( Lanius excubitoroides ) is a bird of the shrike family .
Appearance
The gray-coat shrike reaches a size of about 25 cm, which makes it one of the largest representatives of this bird family. The back, neck and top of the head are gray, the belly and throat are white. The wings are black with the exception of a white spot on the wings of the hand. The black color runs from the wings over the shoulders as a broad band over the eyes and forehead. The tail is also black, only on its sides there is a narrow white stripe that extends from the body to about half the length of the tail. The hook bill and legs are dark gray to black. Females are distinguished from males by a chestnut-colored spot on the flank .
The juveniles are gray-brown on the back, neck and top of the head, light beige on the belly and the plumage is criss-crossed with many dark stripes. The feathers of the wings are rimmed light brown and the beak is also colored light brown and gray.
distribution and habitat
The distribution area of the gray-coated shrike is in Africa and stretches from Mauritania in the west to Tanzania in the east, whereby the bird is not distributed as far as the coast of the Indian Ocean , but only occurs as far as central Tanzania. The bird's habitat is in areas between 600 and 1900 meters, rarely up to 3000 meters.
Be inhabited savannas , subtropical grasslands and open woodlands, mostly in the vicinity of water. Cultivated landscapes are also part of the living space.
Way of life and voice
Gray-coated shrike are very sociable birds that usually live in small groups. In the group there is batting and singing, the singing sounds flowing, but croaky. The call is a sharp " schaah ".
swell
- Terry Stevenson & John Fanshawe: Birds of East Africa . Princeton Field Guides, Princeton 2002, p. 464, ISBN 978-0-691-12665-4
Web links
- Lanius excubitoroides inthe IUCN 2013 Red List of Threatened Species . Listed by: BirdLife International, 2012. Retrieved February 6, 2014.