What's the bill?

Kloof and Hillcrest are treasure troves of varied habitats, from forest to open grasslands, woodlands to wetlands, urban gardens to traditional shopping centres. I will make no effort to identify which of the 435 different recognised biomes in this country occur here!

In all these many habitats you will find birds, and each bird has its own ‘design’ peculiarities. Recognising these specific features will all help the interested birder to identify the 291 species on our list. We intend to help the identification process by looking at the salient visible features of that most important feature of any bird – its bill. There is much that we can interpret about a bird through looking at its bill.

Each species will have bills to suit. At one end of the scale there are the raptors with their hooked bills. At the other end of the spectrum, seed-eating birds have short, conical bills designed to crack seeds.

Let’s have a look at some of the birds.

We started by reference to raptors. The hooked bill is the characteristic feature which virtually defines the raptor group. The hooked bill has as their main purpose the cutting and tearing of prey into suitable sized chunks for swallowing. Interestingly, although the bill can be very fearsome looking it is never used to catch prey, and is very rarely used in defence.

We have featured the iconic Crowned Eagle in previous editions, and the Wahlberg’s Eagle, the Lanner and Peregrine Falcons, the African Goshawk, the Black and Little Sparrowhawks and the Jackal Buzzard are all raptors which have featured in previous editions of the Leopards Echo. Today we feature the Long-crested Eagle.

Long-crested Eagle

This bird is usually solitary but perches very conspicuously on a selection of poles in its territory. All prey is caught on the ground and small animals are swallowed whole. Note the long gape which extends almost to the back of the eye which enables this.

Black-collared Barbet

Grey-headed Bush-Shrike and Orange-Breasted Bush-Shrike

Continuing with the more robust birds we have 3 species of Bush-shrike in our area, Grey-headed, Orange-breasted and Olive. We will look at 2 of these, the Grey-headed Bush-Shrike and Orange-Breasted Bush-shrike.

These two species look alike, but note the difference in bills. The quick way of deciding which is which is to note that the Grey-headed has a robust bill which matches the diet which often includes vertebrates such as chameleons, lizards, small snakes, bats and birds, whereas the Orange-breasted has a lighter bill matching the diet of insects gleaned from the upper tree canopy. When they are in close proximity the difference in size is obvious (grey-headed more than twice as heavy).

Village Weaver and Thick-billed Weaver

Weavers have bills designed for – believe it or not – weaving. Bills vary in size but are straight and strong. Their wings are short and rounded for manoeuvrability as they build their nests.

The thick-billed weaver on the other hand constructs a distinctive nest which is compact, woven with thin strips of reeds and hung between the upright stems of reeds. The male weaves the nest with fine material leaving a neat impression, but the weave is in fact not as complex or developed as that of other weaver species. Could this be a result of having the wrong bill for the job?

We feature the two nest-builders Village Weaver and Thick-billed Weaver.

Gleaners and salliers

As one starts looking at the smaller birds one can start grouping them in other ways, such as differentiating them by their style of feeding. For instance, we have ‘gleaners’ and ‘salliers’. Gleaners are constantly picking up small insects along the branches of trees and shrubs. Gleaning birds are typically small with compact bodies and have small, sharply pointed bills.

Cape White-eyes, Tawny-flanked Prinias, Southern Black Tits, various warbler species and the Brown-backed Honeybird are examples you will find all around us.

“Salliers” are the birds which take up a perched position (usually on a branch) and sally out to capture their target prey (moths, insects) and return to base. They may pick up off the ground or hawk their prey in the air. Flycatchers are typical of this group. We have 7 species in this group, Southern Black, African Dusky, Paradise, and Ashy Flycatchers are the dominant ones locally, but we have regular visitations from Crested Blue-Mantle, Fiscal and Spotted Flycatchers.

In this case we feature the Cape White-eye as a Gleaner and the Ashy Flycatcher as a Sallier.

Fiscal Flycatcher and Common (Southern) Fiscal

I would like to feature two species of birds which look very much alike, except for their bills. These are the Fiscal Flycatcher and the Common (Southern) Fiscal. The males of both these species have black upperparts and white underparts, with very little difference in patterns. The flycatcher has a typical flycatcher’s pointed slender bill whilst the common Fiscal has a heavy hooked bill.

Klaas’s Cuckoo, Diderick Cuckoo and African Emerald Cuckoo

Most cuckoos have a relatively short slightly de-curved bill. This is quite easy to see and tells you that you are probably looking at a cuckoo. There are 5 cuckoos found here commonly – the so-called Green cuckoos – Klaas’s, Diderick and Emerald, – the Red-chested Cuckoo and the less frequent Black Cuckoo. The Red-chested is of course the piet-my-vrou.

We have featured the Diderick before, but it would be interesting to show the 3 green cuckoos side by side: Klaas’s Cuckoo, Diderick Cuckoo and African Emerald Cuckoo. Note the similarity between the ‘cuckoo’ bills.

Greater Double-collared and Collared Sunbirds

Seedeaters

Finally we get to the end of the spectrum with the seedeaters. These have short, conical bills designed specifically to crack seeds. There are 17 local species with seed-cracking bills, so I will simply give you the generics.

Mannikins, Canaries, Firefinches, Widows, Seedeaters, Bishops, Whydahs, Waxbills and Twinspots.

Our featured birds are Bronze and Red-backed Mannikins. This is a wonderful photo showing 2 members of each species at a garden birdbath.

Whoever said suburbia has no wildlife!