Yellow-breasted Apalis Apalis flavida Scientific name definitions

The Yellow-breasted Apalis is a fairly small, slender, and rather long-tailed cisticolid that is frequent in lighter woodland and savannas, from sea level to ca. 2,200 m, across much of sub-Saharan Africa, from Senegambia in the west, to Somalia in the east, and south to the Cape of South Africa. Among its most prominent features are the reddish eyes highlighted by the largely gray face, and the eponymous yellow breast. Substantial and sometimes complex geographical variation has been described in this species, perhaps unsurprisingly given its very large distribution, but many of the differences are comparatively subtle and sometimes debated; nevertheless, several authorities have preferred to recognize one or more additional species in this complex (herein two distinctive subspecies groups are employed to encompass this variation). Although principally resident and sedentary across its range, this usually common apalis does appear to perform post-breeding movements to lower elevations in parts of southern Africa, and seasonal movements have also been suspected in southern Kenya. Yellow-breasted Apalis typically occurs singly, in pairs, or in small family parties, the birds foraging by gleaning small invertebrates from leaves, twigs, and clumps of mistletoes, often in flowering flat-topped acacia trees and sometimes in the company of mixed-species flocks. The species mainly nests during the local wet season, the birds building an oval or purse-shaped nest, which is either domed or semi-domed, and usually has a side entrance at the top.