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Yellow-Throated Bush Sparrow | Gymnoris superciliaris
Kaapse rotsmus | Gorrión Cejudo
The Yellow-Throated Bush Sparrow is an unobtrusive, sparrow-like woodland bird with a broad white eyebrow and a small yellow throat spot that is rarely seen in the field. It creeps along branches and trunks of woodland almost like a tit, and is often first detected by its monotonous, sparrow-like chirping.
Voice
A persistent, monotonous, sparrow-like chirrup-chirrup-chirrup or chee-chee-chee, often kept up for long periods from a high branch. Also a sharp chip as contact call.
Recording: Tim Cockcroft — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
15 to 16 cm, slim for a sparrow, with a fairly strong, pointed bill. Crown and cheeks are grey-brown, bordered by a long, broad creamy-white supercilium reaching the nape and a dark eye-stripe. The back is warm brown with faint streaking, the wing brown with a narrow whitish bar on the median coverts. The throat is white with a small lemon-yellow spot that shows only in good light or on a singing bird; the rest of the underparts are pale grey to dirty white. The bill is blackish when breeding, horn-coloured otherwise. The sexes are alike; juveniles lack the yellow throat spot.
Confusion species
Streaky-Headed Seedeater (Crithagra gularis) has a similar white eyebrow, but a streaked crown, a shorter, thicker canary bill, no white wingbar and a weak canary song instead of chirping. Female House Sparrow (Passer domesticus) has a buff eyebrow, a more heavily streaked back and lives around buildings. Southern Grey-Headed Sparrow (Passer diffusus) has a plain grey head without eyebrow and a rufous rump. The long white eyebrow, the tree-bound behaviour and the voice together are diagnostic.
Habitat
Dry to fairly moist woodland: mixed broadleaf woodland, miombo, mopane, thorn woodland and riverine woodland, also old orchards and park-like country with big trees. It forages mostly in trees, on branches and trunks for insects, and also on the ground for seeds. It nests in tree holes, old barbet and woodpecker holes and sometimes in nest boxes.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Within the region in Angola, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Eswatini, northern and eastern Botswana, northern and central Namibia, and in South Africa in Limpopo, Mpumalanga, Gauteng, North West Province, KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape to the eastern edge of the Karoo. Beyond the region north through southern DR Congo and Tanzania to Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi.
- 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
The monotonous chirping high in a woodland tree is usually the first clue; then look for a slim sparrow shuffling along a branch. The yellow throat spot is visible only when the bird sings upwards or faces you directly. It often joins mixed bird parties in woodland in winter.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Common and widespread in woodland, with no evidence of decline. Loss of old trees with holes may locally limit nest sites.
Scientific name
Gymnoris superciliaris | Blyth, 1845
Blyth described the species in 1845 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. He introduced the genus Gymnoris in that same work. Gymnoris is Greek, from gumnos 'bare' and rhinos 'nostrils', after the unfeathered nostrils. superciliaris is Latin for 'eyebrowed', from supercilium — for the prominent pale eyebrow. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cape Town, South Africa.