All species › Woodpeckers and allies › Honeyguides › Brown-Backed Honeybird
Brown-Backed Honeybird | Prodotiscus regulus
Bruinrughoningspeurder | Indicador Dorsipardo
The Brown-Backed Honeybird is a small, plain brown honeyguide with a fine, pointed bill, more reminiscent of a flycatcher than of a woodpecker relative. It does not lead to bees' nests, feeds on beeswax and scale insects, and lays its eggs in the nests of small passerines.
Voice
Usually silent. A thin, hissing tseep and in display flight a sharp skee-aa, the wings producing a soft clapping or crackling sound.
Recording: Bram Piot — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
About 13 cm, slim, with a short, fine and pointed bill. The upperparts are olive-brown to grey-brown, head and underparts pale grey, throat and belly whiter. The outer tail feathers are largely white and show when the bird spreads its tail or flies off; white downy tufts at the sides of the rump are usually hidden. The sexes are alike; juveniles are greyer.
Confusion species
Green-Backed Honeybird (Prodotiscus zambesiae) is smaller, greener on the back and whiter below, and lives mainly in miombo. Lesser Honeyguide (Indicator minor) has a stubby bill, a dark malar stripe and yellow-green wing edges. African Dusky Flycatcher (Muscicapa adusta) and Spotted Flycatcher (Muscicapa striata) lack the white outer tail feathers.
Habitat
Forest edges, riverine woodland, open woodland with tall trees, exotic plantations and large gardens. It hawks insects in flight and gleans scale insects and wax from branches and leaves. It lays in the open nests of, among others, cisticolas and prinias.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Local and scarce in the east and north of the region: eastern South Africa from the Eastern Cape to Limpopo, Eswatini, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia and Angola, rare in northern Botswana and north-eastern Namibia. Beyond the region widely but thinly distributed from West Africa to Ethiopia and East Africa.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Look for a small brown bird sitting flycatcher-like in the canopy and showing white tail sides as it takes off. The display flight above the treetops, with diving arcs and a crackling wing sound, gives the species away in the breeding season, from September to January.
Conservation status
Not threatened, but scarce everywhere and under-recorded because of its inconspicuousness. The wide range and tolerance of plantations and gardens mean the species is not vulnerable.
Scientific name
Prodotiscus regulus | Sundevall, 1850
Sundevall described the species in 1850 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. He introduced the genus Prodotiscus in that same work. Prodotiscus is a diminutive of Prodotes, an old name for honeyguides, from the Greek prodotēs, 'betrayer' — for birds that 'betray' bees' nests to people and honey badgers. regulus is Latin for 'kinglet, petty prince', diminutive of rex, 'king'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Mohapoani, Witfontein Mountains, North West, South Africa.