Animal Diversity Web

Geographic Range

African Green Broadbills are an endemic species located in a small region in far eastern Zaire and in western Uganda. This area consists of the Itombwe Mountains and the Impenetrable Forest of Uganda (Keith and al., 1992).

• Biogeographic Regions
• ethiopian
  • native

Habitat

African Green Broadbills mostly inhabit tropical primary forest, forest edges, and forests that are dominated by bamboo. They fly at all heights, but seem to prefer the upper branches of fairly tall trees (Lambert and Woodcock, 1996).

• Terrestrial Biomes
• forest
• rainforest

Physical Description

Pseudocalyptomena graueri are 13.6 to 15.6 centimeters in length. Male and female adults are both primarily green with small dark brown to black streaks on the forehead and crown with a white chin and throat. The young are slightly duller than the adults, and both adults and young have beaks that are very wide at the base. No geographical variation is known (Lambert and Woodcock, 1996).

• Other Physical Features
• endothermic
• bilateral symmetry

Reproduction

Pseudocalyptomena graueri are thought to have long breeding seasons. They have been found to nest 11 meters up in 20 meter tall trees in the outer most branches. They make their nests out of a Spanish-moss-like green lichen, and their nests are usually 20 to 25 centimeters in diameter with a 5 centimeter wide entrance. Besides this information, little else is known about the reproduction of P. graueri (Keith and al., 1992).

• Key Reproductive Features
• iteroparous
• gonochoric/gonochoristic/dioecious (sexes separate)
• sexual
• oviparous

Behavior

African Green Broadbills have been spotted alone or in small groups with up to ten members, and they sometimes join mixed-species flocks. In Uganda their flight is slow and they glide most of the time. Their call is described as tsi-tsi or cree-cree and is repeated 3 to 8 times at a fast rate, usually four notes to a second. During the breeding season they sometimes make a very high-pitched bell-like ringing noise (Lambert and Woodcock, 1996).

• Key Behaviors
• flies
• motile

Communication and Perception

• Perception Channels
• visual
• tactile
• acoustic
• chemical

Food Habits

African Green Broadbills are omnivores and feed on seeds, flowers, buds, fruits, beetles, larvae, and snails (Keith and al., 1992).

Economic Importance for Humans: Positive

African Green Broadbills have little economic importance to humans. While they are very pretty birds, they are usually hard to spot so they are not key figures in tourism (Keith and al., 1992).

Conservation Status

Although common in the Itombwe Mountains of Zaire, P. graueri are rare in the Impenetrable forest in Uganda and have been classified as both Rare and Vulnerable by different biologists. They are threatened by forest clearance near villages, commercial logging, and mining activities. Safe from these hazards is the population found in the mountains west of Lake Kivu, Zaire, which is thought to be protected because it resides in the Kahuzi-Biega National Park (Lambert and Woodcock, 1996).

• IUCN Red List

  Vulnerable
  More information

Other Comments

Little is known about P. graueri, they were thought to be a flycatcher species until well into the twentieth century. They had been previously classified with the flycatchers because of their behavior when catching insects, which consists of hawking insects on their wings (Lambert and Woodcock, 1996).

Contributors

Sara Dietsch (author), University of Michigan-Ann Arbor.

References

Keith, S., E. K. Urban, and C. H. Fry. 1992. The Birds of Africa. Volume Four. Academic Press.

Lambert, F. and Woodcock, M. 1996. Pittas, Broadbills and Asities. Pica Press, Mountfield, Sussex, United Kingdom.