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!"

Today I bring you a little birdie with an understated appearance, and yet, it's quite a charmer. This is an African Dusky Flycatcher, Muscicapa adusta. The scientific name means 'burnt/browned fly-catcher'. It is a dull brownish or greyish little bird with no real distinctive markings. It can be recognized in South Africa by its shape, behaviour, call and habitat. I know this one very well – it regularly turns up at one specific location, namely the Haenertsburg Cemetery, which is one of the destinations my team and I go to on Birding Big Day in South Africa. The resident dusky announces itself with its soft, sibilant calls, 'szeet' or 'tsirit'. Neither very bold nor very reclusive, the flycatcher can be spotted unobtrusively sitting on a low branch in the shade, or perching on a fence or on a headstone.

The flycatcher family has experienced great taxonomic upheaval in recent years. The problem as always is that the relationships of birds (and other animals) are masked by their rapid adaptations to particular ways of life. So there are vast numbers of birds worldwide, adapted to catching flies and other aerial insects, and many of them look very similar to typical flycatchers, despite not at all being closely related to them. Then again, there are birds very closely related to typical flycatchers, who 'chose' to pursue different ways of life, and consequently seem different, though genetically there's not much of a difference. Before genetic studies were feasible, taxonomists had to look at small, give-away features of bird anatomies to decide how to classify them. But now, we can analyse the genes themselves, and this has thrown conventional classifications into turmoil. The flycatcher family has been entirely revamped. Some groups were thrown completely out of it, such as the Monarch Flycatchers and the Wattle-eyes, while on the other hand, a large number of species have been transferred from the Thrush Family to the flycatchers. Many of the rarer, more obscure birds of the world haven't yet yielded genetic material for study, so it is likely that further future re-arrangements will occur.

Duskies are 'typical' flycatchers, closely related to the Spotted Flycatcher which is a summer visitor here, spending our winter in Eurasia, which will have summer then. The dusky, on the other hand, is mostly a resident, although some migrate in the winter from the high mountains of the interior (which experience cold in the winter) to the much more pleasant lower-lying regions. It is generally a dweller of forest edges or clearings, not the deep forest interior. It needs some open space in which to fly out after its aerial insect prey, but it likes the concealment of some shade and vegetation. It tends to stay fairly low down, not venturing high up into tree canopies. It has a proportionally large head, and a short bill but a wide gape. It is an expert flyer and can snatch flying insects out of the air with its bill. It typically has a favourite perch or few within its territory; it sits there and watches with its big, keen eyes until it spots a potentially tasty little critter; it sallies forth to grab it, and if successful, returns to its perch to consume it.

Dusky flycatchers are monogamous, couples staying together for life. They breed in the Southern hemisphere spring to early summer. They make their nests in any available cavity, such as a hole in a tree, or a crevice in a rock face, or even a human building. Inside the cavity, they build a base of moss and plant fibers, which they fashion into a small cup, which they line with fine rootlets, feathers and animal hairs. The female lays two to four eggs, and it appears that she does most or all of the incubation. The eggs are light greenish, speckled with reddish brown. The chicks hatch after about 14 or 15 days.

In Africa, the dusky flycatcher is one of the more common bird species, and is widely distributed from Southern Africa into East Africa, and some reach as far west as Nigeria. The birds can live in a variety of habitats – undisturbed forest-edge, or the edges of plantations or orchards, or even in suburban gardens. They are thus not at risk from habitat loss. They may however be severely in danger from a more worrying thing – the global loss of insects. There seems to be a collapse of insect populations all over the world, likely as a result of human pesticides and pollution. If this trend continues, not only are the flycatchers in danger, but so too is the entire ecology of Planet Earth! Insects are massively, incredibly important to all land ecosystems everywhere, and their loss will likely lead to a complete phase-shift of the global ecology, one that even we humans might not survive. Let's hope common sense prevails before then! For now, though, the insects and the little birdies that eat them still remain for us to enjoy.

Willem

22.05.23 Front Page

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