Sickle-winged Chat

About the Sickle-winged Chat

The sickle-winged chat or sicklewing chat (Emarginata sinuata) is a small passerine bird of the Old World flycatcher family Muscicapidae endemic to southern Africa. It is a common resident breeder in South Africa and Lesotho, and is also found in southernmost areas of Botswana and Namibia. Its habitat is Karoo scrub, short grassland, and barren sandy or stony areas. In western coastal areas, it also occurs on agricultural land.

The first formal description of the sickle-winged chat was by the Swedish zoologist Carl Jakob Sundevall in 1858 under the binomial name Luscinia sinuata. The species was subsequently placed in the genus Cercomela introduced by Charles Lucien Bonaparte in 1856. It was moved to the current genus, Emarginata, after molecular phylogenetic studies published in 2010 and 2012 found that Cercomela was polyphyletic. The specific epithet sinuata is the Latin for "curved".

There are 3 subspecies: E. s. hypernephela (Clancey, 1956) — Lesotho E. s. ensifera (Clancey, 1958) — southern Namibia, western and central South Africa E. s. sinuata (Sundevall, 1858) — southern South Africa The sickle-winged chat is around 15 cm (5.9 in) in length... Wikipedia →