Can someone tell me what these birds are that nest in the palm trees at UCT? (1 Viewer)

Hi everybody, I am not a bird expert so my question may refer to some obvious birds.

But I don't know what they are called and I need their name so that I can read more about them on the internet.

The birds that I am interested in are these small black birds. I would wager that they are 200 mm from beak to tail. They have these very striking orange feathers on their wings.

They live in this giant palm tree right outside my dorm room window (see the file attached). I assume they nest there but the tree's berries obstruct the view so I can't see for sure whether this is true. This is now on the Upper Campus of the University of Cape Town, on the slope of Devil's Peak of Table Mountain.

Some of these birds are very accustomed to humans. They will fly around the university campus, looking for food the humans have dropped, and sometimes they will even try to snatch food out of your hands while you're walking around here.

Some of these birds have these little tags on their feet, so I assume they are studied by some organization and that much is known about them. Does anyone know what they are called? I don't think they are very loved by most students here but nevertheless they are interesting.

I went to the Sanparks website and Googled the names of the birds they list to look out for in their Table Mountain Park, but I think this bird is more like a pigeon so nobody really notices it and so none of the pictures I Googled matched the bird I'm looking for.

Hi Adriaan - Welcome to BF!

I am a complete non-expert on African birds, and hence just about the last person to answer this sort of question but ... I really like a challenge.

So, how about Red-winged Starling for your mystery bird? Really common (at least in some places, I wouldn't know about the Cape...), has wings that contrast strongly with the black body (albeit, not orange, exactly) and is not remotely afraid of humans, or so I am told...

Cheers,

Hi Peter C., thanks so much for that! That is exactly the bird I was looking for!

I don't know why the feathers seem orange to me - I may be slightly colour blind - but it's close enough to red! I see on Wikipedia that Linnaeus himself named this bird in 1766 (as Onychognathus morio).

Thanks so much for the help. I would have loved to post a picture but I only have my cellphone here so you won't be able to see what it looks like, but it's exactly as it looks in the Wikipedia picture (link). Being capable of identifying the bird by my description is very impressive Thanks.

Adriaan said:

I would have loved to post a picture but I only have my cellphone here so you won't be able to see what it looks like, but it's exactly as it looks in the Wikipedia picture (link). Being capable of identifying the bird by my description is very impressive Thanks.

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Cool!

I would call it a lucky guess, guided by a little bit of deduction :brains:

- and, especially, helped by a certain website:

http://avibase.bsc-eoc.org/checklist.jsp?region=zawc&list=howardmoore


Peter

P.S. I'll get to see these myself - someday....

Thanks for the link, Peter.

Hopefully you'll see them soon ^^

Looks "orange" to me from these photos in the Opus article! Well more chestnut really I suppose.

Perhaps it's the light?

D

Delia,

I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's just another (in a very long list) of less-than-ideally-chosen bird names.

For instance: this guy's head is what color?