Siffling Cisticola

About the Siffling Cisticola

The short-winged cisticola (Cisticola brachypterus), also known as the siffling cisticola, is a species of bird in the family Cisticolidae. It is found in Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

The short-winged cisticola resembles the neddicky, a similar member of the genus Cisticola, but lacks the rufous crown with a shorter tail and clear buff underparts. The short-winged cisticola was formally described in 1870 by the English ornithologist Richard Bowdler Sharpe based on a specimen collected near the Volta River in Ghana and sent to him by the colonial administrator Herbert Taylor Ussher. Sharpe coined the binomial name Drymoeca brachyptera where the specific epithet is from Ancient Greek βραχυπτερος/brakhupteros meaning "short-winged", from βραχυς/brakhus meaning "short" and -πτερος/'-pteros' meaning "-winged". The short-winged cisticola... Wikipedia →