Southern black tit

The southern black tit or simply black tit (Melaniparus niger) is a species of bird in the tit family Paridae, which is native to woodland habitats in southern Africa.

Subspecies

Three subspecies are recognized:

Melaniparus niger niger – southernmost Mozambique to Eswatini, KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape

Melaniparus niger xanthostomus – southern Angola to northern Namibia, northern Botswana, northwestern Zimbabwe, southern Zambia and southern Tanzania

Melaniparus niger ravidus – eastern Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, eastern Botswana and northern South Africa

Range and habitat

It occurs chiefly in tropical and subtropical savanna woodland, in a semicircular arc from Angola to the Eastern Cape, South Africa. It prefers woodland dominated by broad-leaved trees, most importantly miombo, Combretum species, and Burkea africana. It is especially common in the woodlands of western Zimbabwe, where densities can reach as high as fifty birds per square kilometre.

Description

The southern black tit, unlike parids of the Northern Hemisphere or other local species, is almost entirely monotone in colour and sexually somewhat dimorphic, with the female being greyish and the male very distinctly blue-black in colour. It can be distinguished from the white-winged tit and Carp's tit by having no white rim in its tail and is around 16 centimetres (6 in) in total length including the tail.

Food

Like all tits, it feeds chiefly on insects, and is a voracious consumer of wasps in its favoured habitat; however, it has unusually for a parid been known to take nectar and fruiting figs.

Breeding

Breeding occurs during the summer wet season, but its initiation is very varied and the number of broods reared depends on the consistency of rainfall. The breeding system of the southern black tit has been intensively studied and is often regarded as a classic example of the differences in breeding strategies between warm regions with unpredictable rainfall and cold regions with severe winters. Unlike the great tit or blue tit which can provision up to twenty-five nestlings per year in unassisted pairs, the southern black tit, living on a much poorer food supply, can as an unassisted pair seldom provision even one nestling in a breeding season.