Yellow-billed Shrike
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| Yellow-billed Shrike | ||||||||||||||
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| Corvinella corvina (Shaw, 1809) |
The Yellow-billed Shrike (Corvinella corvina) is a small passerine bird in the shrike family. It is sometimes known as Long-tailed Shrike but this is to be discouraged since it invites confusion with the Long-tailed Shrike, Lanius schach, of tropical southern Asia.
The Yellow-billed Shrike is a common resident breeding bird in tropical Africa from Senegal east to Uganda. It frequents forest and other habitats with trees.
The nest is a cup structure in a bush or tree into which four or five eggs are laid. Only one female in a group breeds at a given time, with other members providing protection and food.
The Yellow-billed Shrike is 18cm long with a long tail and short wings. The adult has mottled brown upperparts and streaked buff underparts. There is a brown eye mask and a rufous wing patch, and the bill is yellow. Sexes are similar, but immatures show buff fringes to the wing feathers.
This is a conspicuous and gregarious bird, always seen in groups, often lined up on telephone wires. It is noisy, with harsh swee-swee and dreee-too calls.
The Yellow-billed Shrike feeds on insects which it locates from prominent look-out perches in trees, wires or posts.
Reference
- Birds of The Gambia by Barlow, Wacher and Disley, ISBN 1-873403-32-1