Marsh tchagra facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Marsh tchagra |
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| Adult male B. m. anchietae in the southern DRC | |
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| Adult female B. m. remotus at Caia in central Mozambique | |
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| Genus: |
Bocagia
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| Species: |
minuta
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The marsh tchagra or blackcap bush-shrike (Bocagia minuta) is a cool bird! It's a type of passerine bird, which means it's a perching bird. This bird lives in marshes in warm, tropical parts of Africa. It's the only species in its group, called Bocagia. Sometimes, people also call it a Tchagra.
Contents
About the Marsh Tchagra
How Scientists Name Birds
The marsh tchagra was first described by a German bird expert, Gustav Hartlaub, in 1858. He gave it a scientific name, Telephonus minutus. Scientific names are like unique codes for every living thing.
Later, in 1894, an English bird expert named George Ernest Shelley created a new group just for this bird. This group is called a genus, and its name is Bocagia. Since the marsh tchagra is the only bird in this group, it's called a monotypic genus.
Different Types of Marsh Tchagras
There are three main types, or subspecies, of the marsh tchagra. Think of them as slightly different versions of the same bird, often living in different places.
- B. m. minuta (Hartlaub, 1858) – You can find this type in West Africa and other tropical parts of Africa. This includes places like Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, west Kenya, and northwest Tanzania.
- B. m. reichenowi (Neumann, 1900) – This type lives in east Tanzania, south Malawi, east Zimbabwe, and Mozambique.
- B. m. anchietae (Bocage, 1869) – This subspecies is found from Angola to southwest Tanzania and northern Malawi.
Sometimes, the B. m. anchietae subspecies is even called Anchieta's tchagra on its own!
Where Does It Live?
The marsh tchagra lives in many countries across central Africa. It's found in places like Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. You can also spot it in Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Its Favorite Places to Live
This bird loves wet places! Its natural habitats are areas with lots of water. These include:
- Subtropical or tropical moist shrubland: These are warm areas with many bushes and small trees.
- Subtropical or tropical seasonally wet or flooded lowland grassland: These are warm, grassy areas that get wet or flooded during certain times of the year.
- Swamps: These are wetlands with trees and bushes, often covered in water.
