The tchagras are
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
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...
s 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 back, brown wings and grey and whitish underparts. The head pattern is distinctive, with a dark cap and black eyestripe separated by a white
supercilium. The bill is strong and hooked.
The male and female are similar in plumage in all tchagra species, but distinguishable from immature birds.
These are solitary birds which tend to
skulk low down or on the ground. They have distinctive whistled calls and can be readily tempted into sight by imitating the call, presumably because the tchagra is concerned that there is an intruder in its territory.
These are species typically of scrub, open woodland, semi-desert and cultivation in sub-
Saharan
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
. They hunt large
insect
Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three ...
s from a low perch in a bush, and the larger species like
black-crowned tchagra
The black-crowned tchagra (''Tchagra senegalus'') is a bushshrike. This family of passerine birds is closely related to the true shrikes in the family Laniidae, and was once included in that group.
This species is found in the Arabian peninsu ...
will also take
vertebrate
Vertebrates () comprise all animal taxa within the subphylum Vertebrata () (chordates with backbones), including all mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. Vertebrates represent the overwhelming majority of the phylum Chordata, with c ...
prey such as frogs and snakes.
Extant Species
The genus ''Tchagra'' was introduced by the French naturalist
René Lesson in 1831 with the
southern tchagra
The southern tchagra (''Tchagra tchagra'') is a passerine bird found in dense scrub and coastal bush in southern and south-eastern South Africa and Eswatini.
This species is a bushshrike, a group closely related to the true shrikes in the fam ...
as the
type species
In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specime ...
.
The genus contains four species:
The
marsh tchagra ''Bocagia minuta'' is sometimes placed in the genus. The dark
Angola
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n subspecies of marsh tchagra was formerly sometimes split as Anchieta's tchagra, ''Tchagra anchietae'', named after
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
explorer
José Alberto de Oliveira Anchieta
José Alberto de Oliveira Anchieta (variations José d'Anchieta, José Anchieta, José de Anchieta - b. October 9, 1832 in Lisbon, Kingdom of Portugal, d. September 14, 1897 in Caconda, Portuguese Angola) was a 19th-century Portuguese explorer a ...
by his zoologist compatriot
José Vicente Barbosa du Bocage in 1869.
References
* Barlow, Wacher and Disley, ''Birds of The Gambia''
* Tony Harris and Kim Franklin, ''Shrikes and Bush-Shrikes''
{{Taxonbar, from=Q2047849
Bird genera
Taxa named by René Lesson