Stenostira scita
Silhouette: Sheatherius · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~20% in a week ~40%
The fairy flycatcher or fairy warbler (Stenostira scita) is a small passerine bird. Formerly placed in the Old World flycatcher family, Muscicapidae, it is now separated with some other "odd flycatchers" as the new family Stenostiridae (Beresford et al. 2005, Fuchs et al. 2006). It is the only member of the genus Stenostira.
It is an endemic resident breeder in southern Africa in Botswana, South Africa, Lesotho and Namibia, and a vagrant to Zimbabwe and Eswatini. Stenostira scita is a common seasonal migrant, breeding in karoo scrub and fynbos in the southern highlands, and migrating north in to spend the southern winter in thorn scrub at lower altitudes.
The fairy flycatcher is 11–12 cm in length. The adult is pale grey above with a black mask through the eye and a white supercilium. The wings are black with a long white stripe, and the long black tail has white sides. The throat is white, the breast is pale grey, and the belly is white with a pinkish-grey wash to its centre. The sexes are alike, but the juvenile is browner than the adult. The eye is brown and the bill and legs are black.
The fairy flycatcher is monogamous unless its mate dies, when... Wikipedia →
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Golden Gate Highlands National Park | 🇿🇦 South Africa |
More parks will be added in future updates.
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Johannesburg | 🇿🇦 South Africa | |
| 2 | Pretoria | 🇿🇦 South Africa |
With luck
About 10% of wildlife watchers report a Fairy Flycatcher sighting in Golden Gate Highlands National Park on a given day, based on 9 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 89th most-seen of the 108 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 20%, and over a week to about 40%, if each day is a fresh chance.
September
In that month about 30% of wildlife watchers report a Fairy Flycatcher in Golden Gate Highlands National Park on a given day, against under 5% in April, June–August and October–February, the lowest months. That is one of Golden Gate Highlands National Park's driest months, with about 30 mm of rain against 130 mm in January. March has too few records to rate.
Between 9 am and noon
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Fairy Flycatcher 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 Golden Gate Highlands National Park, in our data
Golden Gate Highlands National Park is the only park on Wallace's Line with enough records to rate Fairy Flycatcher sightings: about 10% of wildlife watchers there report one on a given day.
Same order: Passeriformes
The closest relatives of the Fairy Flycatcher that you can see in Golden Gate Highlands National Park (order Passeriformes, Perching Birds) are Pied Starling (about 70%), Red-winged Starling (about 70%) and African Stonechat (about 70%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Fairy Flycatcher is recorded against all the birds logged in Golden Gate Highlands National Park (9 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.
