Oenanthe melanura
Silhouette: PhyloPic
In 3 days ~50% in a week ~80%
The blackstart (Oenanthe melanura) is a chat found in desert regions in North Africa, the Middle East and the Arabian Peninsula. It is resident throughout its range. The blackstart is 14 cm (5.5 in) long and is named for its black tail, which is frequently fanned; the rest of its plumage is bluish-grey or grey-brown (North African races being browner, Middle Eastern races bluer). The sexes are similar. The song is a clear melancholy whistle: CHURlee...TRUloo...CHURlee...TRUlur..., with short phrases from the song used as a call.
The habitats of blackstarts are rocky deserts and mountain slopes; they nest in rock crevices lay 3–4 eggs. They feed on insects, taken mainly on the ground. The blackstart is a confident species, unafraid of people. The first formal description of the blackstart was by the Dutch zoologist Coenraad Jacob Temminck in 1824 under the binomial name Saxicola melanura. The blackstart was included as the type species in the genus Cercomela introduced by Charles Lucien Bonaparte in 1856. Molecular phylogenetic studies published in 2010 and 2012 found that the genus Cercomela was polyphyletic with five species, including the blackstart, phylogenetically... Wikipedia →
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Awash National Park | 🇪🇹 Ethiopia |
More parks will be added in future updates.
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ramallah | 🇵🇸 Palestine |
Possible
About 20% of wildlife watchers report a Blackstart sighting in Awash National Park on a given day, based on 29 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 85th most-seen of the 217 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 50%, and over a week to about 80%, if each day is a fresh chance.
January
In that month about 40% of wildlife watchers report a Blackstart in Awash National Park on a given day, against about 10% in August and December, the lowest months. That is one of Awash National Park's driest months, with about 10 mm of rain against 85 mm in August. February–March, May and September have too few records to rate.
Between 8 and 11 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Blackstart sightings with a recorded time, and about 9 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
Only Awash National Park, in our data
Awash National Park is the only park on Wallace's Line with enough records to rate Blackstart sightings: about 20% of wildlife watchers there report one on a given day.
Same genus: Oenanthe
The closest relatives of the Blackstart that you can see in Awash National Park (genus Oenanthe, Wheatears and Allies) are Isabelline Wheatear (about 60%), Pied Wheatear (about 40%) and Sombre Chat (about 40%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Blackstart is recorded against all the birds logged in Awash National Park (29 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
