Turdoides reinwardtii
Silhouette: Sheatherius · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~80% in a week >90%
The blackcap babbler (Turdoides reinwardtii) is a member of the family Leiothrichidae. The blackcap babbler is a common resident breeding bird in west Africa from Senegal to Cameroon. Its habitat is thick scrub and forest. This species, like most babblers, is not migratory, and has short rounded wings and a weak flight.
It builds its cup-shaped nest in a tree, concealed in dense masses of foliage. The normal clutch is two or three eggs. These birds have dark grey-brown upperparts. The head is brownish black with a white throat and conspicuous white eye ring. The underparts are white, mottled on the breast and with buff flanks.
The blackcap babbler lives in flocks of four to twelve or more, which help to raise the young communally. It is a noisy bird, and the presence of a flock may generally be known at some distance by the continual chattering, squeaking and chirping produced by its members. The main call is a cha-ka-ta. It feeds mainly on insects, but also eats fruit.
The binomial commemorates the botanist Caspar Georg Carl Reinwardt. Birds of The Gambia by Barlow, Wacher and Disley, ISBN 1-873403-32-1 Collar, N. J. & Robson, C. 2007. Family Timaliidae (Babblers... Wikipedia →
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Niokolo-Koba National Park | 🇸🇳 Senegal |
More parks will be added in future updates.
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Serrekunda | 🇬🇲 Gambia | |
| 2 | Accra | 🇬🇭 Ghana | |
| 3 | Ouagadougou | 🇧🇫 Burkina Faso |
Likely
About 40% of wildlife watchers report a Blackcap Babbler sighting in Niokolo-Koba National Park on a given day, based on 171 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 50th most-seen of the 215 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 80%, and over a week to over 90%, if each day is a fresh chance.
January and February
In those months about 50% of wildlife watchers report a Blackcap Babbler in Niokolo-Koba National Park on a given day, against about 20% in April, the lowest month. Those are among Niokolo-Koba National Park's driest months, with almost no rain against 300 mm in August. May–July and October have too few records to rate.
Between 8 and 11 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Blackcap Babbler sightings with a recorded time, and about 8 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
Only Niokolo-Koba National Park, in our data
Niokolo-Koba National Park is the only park on Wallace's Line with enough records to rate Blackcap Babbler sightings: about 40% of wildlife watchers there report one on a given day.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Blackcap Babbler is recorded against all the birds logged in Niokolo-Koba National Park (171 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.
