Colours of Wildlife: Cape Batis
Created | Updated Jun 25, 2017
Cape Batis
Willem is a wildlife artist based in South Africa. He says "My aim is simply to express the beauty and wonder that is in Nature, and to heighten people's appreciation of plants, animals and the wilderness. Not everything I paint is African! Though I've never been there, I'm also fascinated by Asia and I've done paintings of Asian rhinos and birds as well. I may in future do some of European, Australian and American species too. I'm fascinated by wild things from all over the world! I mainly paint in watercolours. . . but actually many media including 'digital' paintings with the computer!"
A little birdie for you this time! It is a Cape Batis, Batis capensis. So, what is a batis, then? Batises are small to tiny birds found in sub-Saharan Africa. A majority of the species live in forests, but a few kinds occur in more open habitats such as savannah and even semi-desert, so long as some shelter is accessible. These little birds were once included in the flycatcher family, which used to be huge and rather indiscriminate; presently they and a number of related kinds have been taken out of the typical flycatcher family, the Muscicapidae, and are now classified in a new family, the Platysteiridae, which is confined to Africa. Batises are indeed insect-eating, but catch critters by gleaning leaves and probing bark as well as by snatching them on the wing as typical flycatchers do.
Of the batises, the Cape batis is one of the largest and most brightly coloured. It is indeed probably the easiest one to identify, with its brownish back and bold, rufous patches on its wings and sides. The other batises tend to be mainly black, grey and white, with smaller and not quite as bright reddish-brown patches, these featuring mainly in the females, strangely enough. The Cape batis female differs from the male in lacking the broad, black, breast band, having a narrower, rufous breast band instead, and having an additional rufous patch on her throat.
In South Africa, the Cape batis occurs in a variety of forest and thicket habitats. I associate them mainly with the moist, montane mist forests of the Magoebaskloof region, and other similar spots in the eastern and northern mountains of the Limpopo Province. They occur in Mpumalanga, Kwazulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape and the Western Cape Provinces also, and outside of South Africa in the highland forests of eastern Zimbabwe and southwestern Mozambique. I’ve even seen them outside of this typical forest habitat, in a tangle of dense thorn trees on a small mountain just outside of Polokwane. They also occur in some gardens – but not in Polokwane itself; more likely in towns near forest regions, such as Haenertzburg and Tzaneen. They also occur in areas of dense, largely succulent thicket, as are found in the Eastern Cape, and also in the shrubby 'fynbos' of the southern and western Cape.
A feature of the forests of southern Africa is that they occur as lots of small, isolated patches. Most of the country is very dry; moist climates are only found in mountainous regions and along the Eastern coast. Additionally, even some quite moist regions are seasonally dry, since our region tends to be dominated by strong summer rains – or winter rains in the western Cape – with dryness prevailing the rest of the time. During the dry season, whether winter or summer, the grass or scrub becomes brown and dry, and catch fire with ease. Regular fires eliminate young trees. Consequently, forests are only found in sheltered spots, where both enough moisture exists and where there's protection against fires and frosts.
The challenge for the inhabitants of these small forest patches, is that most of these patches are too small to contain large populations. A very small forest patch may, for instance, hold only five to ten pairs of batises. If one member of a couple should die, it is thus very difficult for the remaining one to get a new partner … there just aren't unattached birds present in such a small area. But it is probable that young batises venture around after becoming mature, perhaps flying about to seek out new, suitable habitat, and thus may stumble upon some recently bereaved batises of the opposite sex, and thus form new partnerships. There are indeed indications that these batises move around much, migrating to warmer regions in the winter, and moving inland from the coast to breed during the summer. During these travels they might easily stumble upon new patches of suitable habitat. In the spring, young batises sometimes form congregations called 'batis parliaments', moving through established territories, calling and flying about, quite discomfiting the older residents!
To find and stay in touch with each other, and to proclaim their presence and ownership in their territories, Cape batises have soft but penetrating, rather purring/churring/ringing calls. These are quite different from the calls of other batises in our region. Batises also give small display flights, calling and fluffing their feathers, to court their partners. Otherwise, they are unobtrusive, flitting around in dense, shady tangles of vegetation. They're not particularly shy, though; once located by their calls, they are easy to spot and catch good glimpses of.
Batises make delightful nests. These are tiny cups, typically placed in a fork of twigs or branches. They are made of fine plant material stuck together with cobwebs and plastered with pieces of lichen on the outside, which camouflages them amazingly well amidst the lichen-covered bark of the twigs and branches. On the inside, the cup is lined with soft fibres. The typical batis clutch is only two eggs. The female just barely fits on the nest; she incubates alone, while her mate brings her food. She gives a soft begging call as he comes to feed her. Being loyally fed like that, she sits on the nest pretty much for the whole of the typically-seventeen-day incubation period. After the chicks hatch, she broods them for a few days while the male still brings food for them all; but then she starts leaving the chicks alone to fetch food for them along with the male. Even the chicks themselves are very well camouflaged and sit very still while their parents are away, making them quite hard to spot. The chicks defecate in the form of small, white sacs containing the faeces; the parents will take these and drop them away from the nest so as not to attract attention, as well as keeping the nest hygienic. Batises are amazingly tolerant around their nests, and will go about their business even with observers getting quite close. The chicks leave the nest at the age of sixteen to eighteen days, but remain with their parents for up to a year before dispersing and trying to find their own territories.
At present, Cape Batises are widespread, occurring in a variety of habitats, tolerant of much human disturbance, and not facing any specific persecution or threats. Thus, these handsome little birds are likely to be with us for a while longer, still.
