The white-shouldered black tit (''Melaniparus guineensis''), also known as the pale-eyed black tit, is a passerine bird in the tit family. It breeds in a belt across Africa from Senegal in the west to Kenya and Ethiopia in the east. It is sometimes considered conspecific with the more southerly

white-winged black tit The white-winged black tit (''Melaniparus leucomelas'') is a passerine bird in the tit family Paridae. It is also known as the white-winged tit, dark-eyed black tit or northern black tit. The species was first described by Eduard Rüppell in 1840 ...

''Melaniparus leucomelas'' and, like that species, it is mainly black with a white wing patch, but differs in that it has a pale eye. It is a resident in

conifer Conifers are a group of conifer cone, cone-bearing Spermatophyte, seed plants, a subset of gymnosperms. Scientifically, they make up the phylum, division Pinophyta (), also known as Coniferophyta () or Coniferae. The division contains a single ...

ous woodlands throughout its range, and nests in tree crevice. 4-6 reddish-brown blotched pinkish-white eggs are laid. The white-shouldered black tit was formerly one of the many species in the genus '' Parus'' but was moved to ''

Melaniparus ''Melaniparus'' is a genus of birds in the tit family. The species were formerly placed in the speciose genus ''Parus'' but were moved to ''Melaniparus'' based on a molecular phylogenetic analysis published in 2013 that showed that the members fo ...

'' after a

molecular phylogenetic Molecular phylogenetics () is the branch of phylogeny that analyzes genetic, hereditary molecular differences, predominantly in DNA sequences, to gain information on an organism's evolutionary relationships. From these analyses, it is possible to ...

analysis published in 2013 showed that birds in the new genus formed a distinct clade.

References

*Harrap and Quinn, ''Tits, Nuthatches and Treecreepers'' white-shouldered black tit Birds of Sub-Saharan Africa white-shouldered black tit {{Paridae-stub