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Red-capped forest warbler

species of bird

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 2, 2026
Entity authorityQ1305642
Source-derived summary

The red-capped forest warbler (Artisornis metopias), also known as the African tailorbird, is a songbird of the family Cisticolidae, formerly part of the "Old World warbler" assemblage. It is found in Mozambique and Tanzania. Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical moist montane forests from 1600 to 2500 m.

Taxonomy

The red-capped forest warbler was formally described in 1907 by the German ornithologist Anton Reichenow from a specimen collected in the Usambara Mountains of Tanzania. Reichenow coined the binomial name Prinia metopias. The specific epithet is from the Ancient Greek metōpias meaning "having a high forehead". This warbler is now placed with the long-billed forest warbler in the genus Artisornis that was introduced in 1928 by the American ornithologist Herbert Friedmann.

Two subspecies are recognised:

Artisornis metopias metopias (Reichenow, 1907) – northeast Tanzania to northwest Mozambique

Artisornis metopias altus (Friedmann, 1927) – Uluguru Mountains (east Tanzania)

Description

The red-capped forest warbler is olive-brown above with a whitish color from the center of the throat to the vent, and with flanks that are washed grey. The crown is a rich chestnut brown, as well as the ear-coverts and the sides of the neck. Immature individuals have a pale yellow wash on their undersides.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Red-capped forest warbler” is species of bird. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Red-capped, forest and warbler, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewUseful for establishing the present vocabulary of the subject while preserving a route back to the evidence on which that vocabulary rests. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1600, 1907, 1928, 1927—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Red-capped, forest and warbler is the immediate research focus.
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The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1305642. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1600, 1907, 1928 and 1927.

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This entry incorporates text from Red-capped forest warbler” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.