tags: Tractrac Chat, Layard's Chat, Cercomela tractrac, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Tractrac Chat, also known as the Layard's Chat, Cercomela tractrac, photographed in Swakopmund, Namibia, Africa [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Those of you who are unfamiliar with African birds should still be able to identify this bird to family.
Dennis Paulson with a Tractrac Chat, also known as the Layard's Chat, Cercomela tractrac, photographed in Swakopmund, Namibia, Africa.
Image: courtesy of Dennis Paulson, April 2007 [larger view].
The photographer writes;
There are no other chats in southern Africa that are at all similar except the Karoo Chat, which is darker than this bird and has a dark tail with white edges. Tractrac has a pale rump and more white in the tail base. You can sort of see that in the photo. But Tractrac Chat comes in two subspecies, an interior one that is gray-brown above and this one of coastal dunes that is almost white. There is nothing else as pale as that. Isabelline Wheatear and Northern Wheatear (nonbreeding plumage) look something like this, but they are darker, with black, white-based tails, and don't occur in Namibia.
This was a very tame bird.
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Oh that's tough for me, but I rather think it's an old-world flycatcher (family Muscicapidae) based on general shape, and judging from the white on the sides of the tail that you can just make out from this angle, I'd say a wheatear (genus Oenanthe).
But I don't know squat about African species aside from those that migrate through the Med, and this doesn't look like any of those that migrate (no hint of an eyebrow stripe or "ear" behind the eye).
Tractrac chat? Very light colour, white at base of tail, especially on the sides.
Karoo Chat? My old Roberts Birds of South Africa talks of its dark centre tail feathers, (along with the white on the sides)...and grey rump, which you can't really see in this picture....but he's up on the top of the bush, a trait mentioned in the book, which also has the Karoo Chat in Turdidae, the move to Muscicapidae being much more recent. Ms. GS...I'll have to check out Animal Evolution reviewed today...it does look very interesting....
It's either Tractrac Chat (Cercomela tractrac),Karoo Chat (C. schlegelii), Familiar Chat (C. familiaris), Sickle-winged Chat (C. sinuata) or female Mountain Chat (Oenanthe monticola). It looks as though the outer tail feather is all white which makes it Karoo Chat as Familiar would have darker underparts, Mountain and Tractrac have white only part-way down the tail. Sickle-winged Chat should show more contrast between upper- and underparts.which again leaves Karoo. The rump colour would clinch it but can't be seen here.
Can't be the Familiar Chat, otherwise everyone would have got it by now.
Unfamiliar Chat? Vaguely Known Chat?
OOPS, that should read " we can discount Familiar Chat as Familiar........
Repeat after me "I must proof-read better"
Here we go again... (damn Ernst Mayr) "Familiar"-ity "breeds" contempt!
Cercomela tractrac looks about right- short straight bill, black legs and feet, dark eye, until you get to the supercilium which should look a little more obvious than as in the photo above... so looking at the Karoo Chat, C. schlegelii, we can't use relative size (Karoos being slightly larger but same proportions) but it does have a more subdued eyebrow and supposedly has the white of the outer tail feathers extending more to the tip of the tail than the Tractrac, which seems to be the case in the photo... it does look to be more pale than the grey form of the female Mountain Wheatear, Oenanthe monticola, so we're back to Cercomela ...
can't be C. familiaris as there is no orange in the tail, nor C. sinuata in the absence of a rufous patch behind the eye and indeed a brown eye, nor a Blackstart, Cercomela melanura because of range (the North African subspecies of melanura look very close)... so as with Adrian and Ruthie, I think I'm back to Karoo if only because as a Brit, the words of Thomas Hardy come to the fore:
"Young Hodge the Drummer never knew / Fresh from his Wessex home / The meaning of the broad Karoo, / The Bush, the dusty loam, / And why uprose to nightly view / Strange stars amid the gloam."
Could someone explain how to separate Tractrac and Karoo based on this photo? I have seen both in the Karoo and am now starting to doubt my records of both these species. I know we id'd some of them by rump colour but any other field marks would be appreciated. Thanks.