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Tawny-Flanked Prinia | Prinia subflava
Roestflankprinia | Prinia Modesta
The Tawny-Flanked Prinia is the common prinia of the northern and eastern parts of the region: a brown, long-tailed warbler with a white supercilium, rufous-edged wings and tawny flanks. It often holds its tail upright and calls loudly from rank growth, gardens and reed edges. It is one of the first warblers a visitor to the savanna gets to know.
Voice
Very vocal. The song is a fast, loud repeated series, sbrrp-sbrrp-sbrrp or cheep-cheep-cheep, from a lookout with the tail upright. The alarm is a nasal, whining tcheeew and a dry, crackling zzzt, often repeated at length when a snake or an intruder is being watched.
Recording: Bernard BOUSQUET — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
11–14 cm, about half of which is tail. The upperparts are warm grey-brown, the flight feathers broadly edged rufous, giving a rusty wing. There is a distinct white supercilium and a dark loral stripe. The underparts are white to cream, with warm tawny to rufous-buff flanks and undertail coverts; the breast is unstreaked. The long graduated tail has dark spots before the pale tips, visible when fanned. The iris is pale brown to orange-brown, the bill dark, the legs pink. The sexes are alike; in non-breeding plumage the upperparts and flanks are warmer and the tail slightly longer. Juveniles are yellower below.
Confusion species
Black-Chested Prinia Prinia flavicans of the dry western savanna has clearly yellow underparts even outside the breeding season, without its breast band, and lacks the rufous wing edges. Karoo Prinia Prinia maculosa and Drakensberg Prinia Prinia hypoxantha have a streaked throat and breast. Red-Winged Prinia Prinia erythroptera has plain rufous wings without a white supercilium and lives in tall grass in woodland. Roberts's Warbler Oreophilais robertsi of the Eastern Highlands is grey with a pale iris. Cisticolas have a shorter tail, mostly a streaked back and no white supercilium. White supercilium, rusty wing and tawny flanks on an unstreaked bird are characteristic.
Habitat
Rank growth and tall grass with bushes at forest edges, along rivers, vleis and dams, overgrown fields, the edges of sugarcane and maize, dense gardens and parks, and thicket in savanna and woodland. It is absent from open grassland without bushes and from truly arid country. It forages low in the vegetation for insects, usually in pairs or family groups.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Within the region widespread in Angola (except the dry south-west), Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, in northern and eastern Botswana (Okavango, Chobe and the east), in north-eastern Namibia (Kavango and the Zambezi Region), in Eswatini, and in South Africa in Limpopo, Mpumalanga, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the east of the Eastern Cape. It is absent from the dry western half of the region and from Lesotho. Beyond the region across almost all of sub-Saharan 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
Year-round and common everywhere within its range. Listen in rank growth near water for the repeated sbrrp-sbrrp; the singer often sits on top of a bush or grass stem with its tail upright and is then clearly visible. The rusty wings are the best feature in flight.
Conservation status
Not threatened. One of the commonest warblers of the region, thriving in man-made landscapes such as gardens, field margins and overgrown ground.
Scientific name
Prinia subflava | (Gmelin, 1789)
Gmelin described the species in 1789 as Motacilla subflava; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Prinia was introduced in 1821 by Horsfield. Prinia comes from prinya, the Javanese name for Prinia familiaris, the prinia of that island. subflava is Latin for 'yellowish', for the pale yellow underparts. The specimen the first description was based on came from Senegal.