Laniarius aethiopicus
Silhouette: Sheatherius · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~30% in a week ~60%
The Ethiopian boubou (Laniarius aethiopicus) is a species of bird in the family Malaconotidae. It is found in Eritrea, Ethiopia, northwest Somalia, and northern Kenya. Its natural habitat is moist savanna. Its breast and belly are pinkish. It has a narrow wing stripe, extending across the median and larger wing coverts, and often a bit onto the secondary remiges. Outer tail feathers never have white tips.
The Ethiopian boubou was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the thrushes in the genus Turdus and coined the binomial name Turdus aethiopicus. Gmelin based his description on "Le merle noire et blanc d'Abyssinie" that had been described in 1775 by the French polymath, the Comte de Buffon. The Ethiopian boubou is now one of 22 species placed in the genus Laniarius that was introduced in 1816 by the French ornithologist Louis Pierre Vieillot. The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.
The Ethiopian boubou was formerly lumped with the tropical boubou, the black boubou, and the East Coast boubou. The species complex was split based... Wikipedia →
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Awash National Park | 🇪🇹 Ethiopia | |
| 2 | Bale Mountains National Park | 🇪🇹 Ethiopia |
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Addis Ababa | 🇪🇹 Ethiopia |
With luck
About 10% of wildlife watchers report an Ethiopian Boubou sighting in Addis Ababa on a given day, based on 40 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data. It is the 39th most-seen of the 109 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 30%, and over a week to about 60%, if each day is a fresh chance.
August and September
In those months about 20% of wildlife watchers report an Ethiopian Boubou in Addis Ababa on a given day, against about 10% in October to July, the lowest months. Those are among Addis Ababa's wettest months, with about 200 mm of rain a month against 10 mm in January.
Between 7 and 10 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Ethiopian Boubou 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 Addis Ababa, in our data
Addis Ababa is the only city on Wallace's Line with enough records to rate Ethiopian Boubou sightings: about 10% of wildlife watchers there report one on a given day.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Ethiopian Boubou is recorded against all the birds logged in Addis Ababa (40 verified sightings), 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.
