African Shrike-flycatcher

About the African Shrike-flycatcher

The African shrike-flycatcher or red-eyed shrike-flycatcher (Megabyas flammulatus) is a species of bird in the vanga family Vangidae. It is the only species in the monotypic genus Megabyas. The African shrike-flycatcher was described by the French naturalists Jules Verreaux and Édouard Verreaux in 1855, who placed it in its own genus, Megabyas. Over the years, the species was sometimes lumped with the closely related black-and-white shrike-flycatcher in the genus Bias, another widespread African species similar in size, plumage and skull shape. The genus name is derived from the Ancient Greek word mega for large and Bias for the genus it was evidently related to.

The African shrike-flycatcher was once lumped with many other families of birds in Muscicapidae, the Old World flycatchers. Within that enlarged family, it was placed with the monarch-flycatchers until 1970 when it was identified as closer to the wattle-eye and batises in the present day family Platysteiridae. A 2004 analysis of the genetics of the species along with other members of the family showed that it, along with the genus Bias, were actually embedded in the Vangidae, a family previously thought to be... Wikipedia →