Sickle-winged Chat
Emarginata sinuata
A tall, plain gray-brown chat with upright posture that has a conspicuous eye-ring and a creamy-orange rump. Inner to outer tail feathers have progressively more creamy-orange coloration at the bases, resulting in a black triangle on the tail. Singles and pairs occupy open rangelands, pastures and alpine scrub, where they forage on the ground and from low perches. It flicks its wings, but less habitually than the similar Familiar Chat, which has shorter legs, a less obvious eye-ring, a rufous rump, and a tail with an inverted black “T” pattern.
Identification
The sickle-winged chat is around 15 cm (5.9 in) in length and weighs 17–20 g (0.60–0.71 oz). Its upperparts are dark grey, but it has brown wings and a rufous patch behind the eye. The tail and rump are buff-pink, with an inverted wedge of black at the end of the tail. Its underparts are off-white, the short straight bill, legs and feet are black and the eye is brown. The sexes are similar, but the juvenile has buff tips to its feathers.<p>The contrast between the dark upperparts and the much paler underparts distinguish this species from the more uniformly coloured familiar chat. It also has the pale salmon-buff on the rump extending only onto the base of the tail, whereas the familiar chat has a richer hue which almost reaches the tip of the tail.<p>The sickle-winged chat has a chak-chak call and a warbled song.
Taxonomy
The first formal description of the sickle-winged chat was by the Swedish zoologist Carl Jakob Sundevall in 1858 under the binomial name Luscinia sinuata. The species was subsequently placed in the genus Cercomela introduced by Charles Lucien Bonaparte in 1856. It was moved to the current genus, Emarginata, after molecular phylogenetic studies published in 2010 and 2012 found that Cercomela was polyphyletic. The specific epithet sinuata is the Latin for "curved".<p>There are 3 subspecies:
- Scientific name
- Emarginata sinuata
- Authority
- (Sundevall, 1858)
- Order
- Passeriformes
- Family
- Muscicapidae
- Genus
- Emarginata
Range and habitat
- Migration
- Resident species
Behavior
The sickle-winged chat builds a cup-shaped nest of straw and leaves on the ground, usually under a bush or shrub. It lays two to four green or blue eggs. This species is monogamous.<p>The sickle-winged chat is usually seen singly or in pairs. It forages on the ground or at the base of trees for insects.<p>In comparison with the familiar chat, it spends more time on the ground and runs more swiftly. It flicks its wings, but less frequently than the familiar chat.
Conservation
This common species has a large range, with an estimated extent of 850,000 km2. The population size is believed to be large, and the species is not believed to approach the thresholds for the population decline criterion of the IUCN Red List (i.e. declining more than 30% in ten years or three generations). For these reasons, the species is evaluated as Least Concern.
- Population trend
- stable
Photos
Distribution
Bird Calls
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