The marsh tchagra or blackcap bush-shrike (''Bocagia minuta'') is a species of

passerine A passerine () is any bird of the order Passeriformes (; from Latin 'sparrow' and '-shaped'), which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds, passerines are distinguished from other orders of birds by th ...

bird placed in the

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispe ...

genus ''Bocagia'' in the family Malaconotidae. It is native to marshes in the tropics and subtropics of Africa. It is sometimes placed in the genus ''

Tchagra The tchagras are passerine birds in the bushshrike family, which are closely related to the true shrikes in the family Laniidae, and were once included in that group. Description These are long-tailed birds, typically with a grey or grey-brown ...

''.

Taxonomy

The marsh tchagra was described by the German ornithologist

Gustav Hartlaub Karel Johan Gustav Hartlaub (8 November 1814 – 29 November 1900) was a German physician and ornithologist. Hartlaub was born in Bremen, and studied at Bonn and Berlin before graduating in medicine at Göttingen. In 1840, he began to study and co ...

in 1858 and given the binomial name ''Telephonus minutus''. The species is now placed in the

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

''Bocagia'' that was introduced by the English ornithologist George Ernest Shelley in 1894. Three subspecies are recognised. * ''B. m. minuta'' (Hartlaub, 1858) – West Africa and African tropics: Sierra Leone to Ethiopia, west Kenya and northwest Tanzania * ''B. m. reichenowi'' ( Neumann, 1900) – east Tanzania, south Malawi, east Zimbabwe and Mozambique * ''B. m. anchietae'' (

Bocage Bocage (, ) is a terrain of mixed woodland and pasture characteristic of parts of Northern France, Southern England, Ireland, the Netherlands and Northern Germany, in regions where pastoral farming is the dominant land use. ''Bocage'' may als ...

, 1869) – Angola to southwest Tanzania and north Malawi The subspecies ''B. m. anchietae'' is sometimes separated as Anchieta's tchagra.

Distribution and habitat

It is widely distributed across central Africa and is found in Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Its natural

habitat In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...

s are subtropical or tropical moist shrubland, subtropical or tropical seasonally wet or flooded lowland

grassland A grassland is an area where the vegetation is dominated by grasses ( Poaceae). However, sedge ( Cyperaceae) and rush ( Juncaceae) can also be found along with variable proportions of legumes, like clover, and other herbs. Grasslands occur na ...

, and swamps.

References

External links

* Marsh Tchagra �
Species text in The Atlas of Southern African Birds
marsh tchagra Birds of Sub-Saharan Africa marsh tchagra Taxonomy articles created by Polbot {{Malaconotidae-stub