Prionops plumatus
Silhouette: Sheatherius · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~30% in a week ~50%
The white-crested helmetshrike (Prionops plumatus), also known as the white helmetshrike, is a species of passerine bird in the Vanga family Vangidae, formerly usually included in the Malaconotidae. It is found in Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical dry forests, dry savanna, moist savanna, and subtropical or tropical dry shrubland. It is a gregarious bird and is found in small, active parties that are always on the move as they forage among the foliage or on the ground. They chatter noisily to one another as they move through their territory. (White-crested helmetshrike = ) White helmetshrike - Species text in The Atlas of Southern African Birds. Wikipedia →
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Harare | 🇿🇼 Zimbabwe |
With luck
About 10% of wildlife watchers report a White-crested Helmetshrike sighting in Harare on a given day, based on 58 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data. It is the 83rd most-seen of the 213 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 30%, and over a week to about 50%, if each day is a fresh chance.
March, June and August–September
In those months about 20% of wildlife watchers report a White-crested Helmetshrike in Harare on a given day, against under 5% in December, the lowest month. Those are among Harare's driest months, with about 25 mm of rain a month against 200 mm in December.
Between 10 am and 1 pm
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most White-crested Helmetshrike 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 Harare, in our data
Harare is the only city on Wallace's Line with enough records to rate White-crested Helmetshrike sightings: about 10% of wildlife watchers there report one on a given day.
Same order: Passeriformes
The closest relatives of the White-crested Helmetshrike that you can see in Harare (order Passeriformes, Perching Birds) are Common Bulbul (about 90%), Pied Crow (about 90%) and Blue-breasted Cordonbleu (about 70%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the White-crested Helmetshrike is recorded against all the birds logged in Harare (58 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.
