Animalia > Chordata > Aves > Passeriformes > Motacillidae > Motacilla > Motacilla capensis

Motacilla capensis (Cape Wagtail)

Wikipedia Abstract

The Cape wagtail (Motacilla capensis) is a small passerine bird in the family Motacillidae, which includes the wagtails, pipits and longclaws. This species breeds in much of Africa from eastern Zaire and Angola across to Kenya and south to the Cape in South Africa. This wagtail forages energetically for insect on the ground, alone or in pairs, moving with a characteristic bobbing motion that causes the tail to swing up and down. Feeding is often near water, including garden ponds, and this bird will eat tadpoles or tiny fish if the opportunity arises.
View Wikipedia Record: Motacilla capensis

Infraspecies

Motacilla capensis capensis
Motacilla capensis simplicissima (Angolan Wagtail)
Motacilla capensis wellsi (Wells's Wagtail)

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
3
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
20
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 6.74653
EDGE Score: 2.04725
Learn more at EDGE of Existence programme

Attributes

Adult Weight [1]  21 grams
Birth Weight [1]  2.4 grams
Female Weight [3]  22 grams
Diet [2]  Carnivore (Invertebrates), Carnivore (Vertebrates), Piscivore
Diet - Ectothermic [2]  10 %
Diet - Fish [2]  10 %
Diet - Invertibrates [2]  80 %
Clutch Size [5]  2
Incubation [4]  13 days

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

Biodiversity Hotspots

Name Location Endemic Species Website
Cape Floristic Region South Africa No
Eastern Afromontane Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, Uganda, Yemen, Zimbabwe No
Maputaland-Pondoland-Albany Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland No
Succulent Karoo Namibia, South Africa No

Predators

Accipiter rufiventris (Rufous-breasted Sparrowhawk)[4]

External References

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Terje Lislevand, Jordi Figuerola, and Tamás Székely. 2007. Avian body sizes in relation to fecundity, mating system, display behavior, and resource sharing. Ecology 88:1605
♦ 2Hamish Wilman, Jonathan Belmaker, Jennifer Simpson, Carolina de la Rosa, Marcelo M. Rivadeneira, and Walter Jetz. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027
♦ 3Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
♦ 4del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., Sargatal, J., Christie, D.A. & de Juana, E. (eds.). Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona.
♦ 5Jetz W, Sekercioglu CH, Böhning-Gaese K (2008) The Worldwide Variation in Avian Clutch Size across Species and Space PLoS Biol 6(12): e303. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060303
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Biodiversity Hotspots provided by Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0