Purple Grenadier
Granatina ianthinogaster
A distinctive and attractive waxbill with a deep-blue tail and a red bill. Males are more colorful, with a purple belly, a rufous hood, and purple and red around the eye. Females are mostly rufous with pale blue patches above and below the eye. Found in a variety of savanna and woodland habitats, often in small flocks, sometimes mixed with other species. Gives high-pitched squeaking and rattling calls and a lisping, whistled song.
Identification
The length averages 13.3 cm (5.25 in). All ages and sexes have a black tail, and adults have a red bill. The male has a cinnamon-colored head and neck with a blue patch surrounding the eye. The rump is purplish blue and the underparts are violet-blue with variable rufous patches. The female is smaller and mostly cinnamon brown with white barring on the underparts and silver-blue eyepatches. Juveniles are like females, but mostly unbarred tawny-brown with a reddish-brown bill.<p>The song (in Kenya) is described as "a high, thin chit-cheet tsereea-ee-ee tsit-tsit, or cheerer cheet tsee-tsee sur-chit."
Taxonomy
- Scientific name
- Granatina ianthinogaster
- Authority
- (Reichenow, 1879)
- Order
- Passeriformes
- Family
- Estrildidae
- Genus
- Granatina
Range and habitat
It is found in subtropical and tropical (lowland) dry shrubland in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda, an estimated global extent of occurrence of 1,500,000 km2. The status of the species is evaluated as Least Concern.
- Migration
- Resident species
Conservation
- Population trend
- stable
Photos
Distribution
Bird Calls
Other Birds
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Pyrrhula leucogenis
A medium-sized bird of low- to mid-elevation montane forest and edge on Mindanao. Overall pale brown with a slightly paler belly, a black face, crown, tail, bottom half of the wing, and shoulder patch, a white rump, and a prominent white cheek. Note the thick black bill. Feeds on berries and flowers and joins mixed-species flocks in the non-breeding season. No similar birds occur in its range. Voice includes medium-pitched clear, downslurred piping calls, “piuu! piuu,” sometimes with a flat first note: “piii! piuu!”
Pere David's Laughingthrush
Pterorhinus davidi
A plain clay-brown laughingthrush with a long, curved yellow bill. Largely without distinguishing plumage features, but note weak white brow, blue-gray tinge to the wings, and small black patches on the “elbow” and face. The only laughingthrush in much of its range. Forages in hilly and montane regions, where it often moves about noisily in medium-sized flocks in scrubby, brushy habitat, often near waterways. Long rambling song melodious and thrush-like; calls include fluid whistles, nasal chattering, and quiet peeping.
Eastern Hooded Pitta
Pitta novaeguineae
Beautiful leaf-green pitta of New Guinea and surrounding islands. Like the other “Hooded-type” pittas with which it was formerly grouped, this species has a black head, powder-blue shoulder patch, and red on the lower belly and undertail. Birds on Numfor Island, off northwestern New Guinea, have a broad deep blue border to the red belly patch. Song is a simple, insistent-sounding “wui, wuii!” with a barking quality.
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