Motacilla aguimp
Silhouette: Martin Bulla, based on Ren Hathway's illustration · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~20% in a week ~50%
The African pied wagtail, or African wagtail, (Motacilla aguimp) is a species of bird in the family Motacillidae. A striking black and white wagtail with black upperparts contrasting with white underparts, it has a white supercilium and a white patch in the folded wing. Juvenile birds are greyer, while birds of the nominate subspecies show grey flanks. They are 20 cm (7.9 in) long.
The African pied wagtail is found in sub-Saharan Africa from the Eastern Cape north to extreme southern Egypt and from Guinea to western Eritrea and Somalia. It is a vagrant to Burkina Faso, Gambia, Mauritania,Uganda and the Western Cape.
The African pied wagtail inhabits subtropical or tropical, seasonally wet or flooded, lowland grassland, rivers, and sometimes freshwater marshes. In some areas, it is commensal with humans in towns and villages. In Malawi, African pied wagtails start breeding before the rains and continue to breed into the rainy season; they breed during six months, peaking in March and October. Both the males and females participate in nest building, but only the females incubate, and both sexes feed the young. The mean... Wikipedia →
With luck
About 10% of wildlife watchers report an African Pied Wagtail sighting in Lilongwe on a given day, based on 7 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data. It is the 35th most-seen of the 52 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 20%, and over a week to about 50%, if each day is a fresh chance.
May–July, September and December–March
In those months about 10% of wildlife watchers report an African Pied Wagtail in Lilongwe on a given day, against under 5% in April, August and November, the lowest months. October has too few records to rate.
Between 9 am and noon
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most African Pied Wagtail sightings with a recorded time, and about 9 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
13th of 15
Of the 15 cities where we can rate African Pied Wagtail sightings, Lilongwe ranks 13th at about 10%. The best odds are in Nairobi (Kenya, about 60%), Lusaka (Zambia, about 50%) and Mombasa (Kenya, about 30%).
Same order: Passeriformes
The closest relatives of the African Pied Wagtail that you can see in Lilongwe (order Passeriformes, Perching Birds) are Pied Crow (about 50%), Common Bulbul (about 40%) and White-browed Robin-Chat (about 30%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the African Pied Wagtail is recorded against all the birds logged in Lilongwe (7 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.
