Emarginata tractrac
Silhouette: Martin Bulla, based on François Desbordes' illustration · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~30% in a week ~60%
The tractrac chat (Emarginata tractrac) is a small passerine bird of the Old World flycatcher family Muscicapidae. It is a common resident breeder in southernmost Angola, western Namibia and western South Africa. Its habitat is Karoo and desert scrub, hummock dunes and gravel plains.
The tractrac chat was illustrated and described by the French naturalist François Levaillant in Volume 4 of his Histoire naturelle des oiseaux d'Afrique published in 1805. He named the bird, "Le tractrac", an onomatopoeia based on its call. The first formal description of the tractrac chat was by the English publisher John Wilkes in 1817 under the binomial name Motacilla tractrac. The species was subsequently placed in the genus Cercomela introduced by Charles Lucien Bonaparte in 1856. It was moved to its current genus, Emarginata, after molecular phylogenetic studies published in 2010 and 2012 found that Cercomela was polyphyletic.
There are 5 subspecies: E... Wikipedia →
Call0:12
South Africa · 2017
© Peter Boesman · XC392477 · CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Namib-Naukluft National Park | 🇳🇦 Namibia | |
| 2 | Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park | 🇿🇦 South Africa |
With luck
About 10% of wildlife watchers report a Tractrac Chat sighting in Namib-Naukluft National Park on a given day, based on 144 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 45th most-seen of the 108 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.
June–July and September–October
In those months about 20% of wildlife watchers report a Tractrac Chat in Namib-Naukluft National Park on a given day, against under 5% in May and December, the lowest months.
Between 9 am and noon
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Tractrac Chat sightings with a recorded time, and about 9 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
Yes
Of the 2 parks where we can rate Tractrac Chat sightings, Namib-Naukluft National Park has the highest daily chance: about 10%. Next come Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park (South Africa, under 5%).
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Tractrac Chat is recorded against all the birds logged in Namib-Naukluft National Park (144 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.
