Oenanthe melanura
Silhouette: PhyloPic
In 3 days ~30% in a week ~50%
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 |
With luck
About 10% of wildlife watchers report a Blackstart sighting in Ramallah on a given day, based on 58 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data. It is the 51st most-seen of the 118 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.
August, October and December
In those months about 20% of wildlife watchers report a Blackstart in Ramallah on a given day, against under 5% in September, the lowest month.
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 Ramallah, in our data
Ramallah is the only city on Wallace's Line with enough records to rate Blackstart sightings: about 10% of wildlife watchers there report one on a given day.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Blackstart is recorded against all the birds logged in Ramallah (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.
