Buff-spotted Flufftail Sarothrura elegans Scientific name definitions

The Buff-spotted Flufftail has a very wide range, from West Africa, in Guinea, east, rather discontinuously, to southern Ethiopia (with one historical record, presumably involving a migrant, in northern Somalia), and south to northern Angola, as well as more widely through East and southern Africa all the way to the Cape. The species is sexually dimorphic, with the male having a bright orange-chestnut head to breast, and the remainder of the underparts and upperparts mainly sooty black with dense pale spotting, and barring below, whereas the female lacks the brightly colored head and neck, but has virtually the entire plumage heavily spotted and barred; both sexes have a contrastingly barred tail, which contrary to the English name of all Sarothrura rails is not at all fluffy! Two subspecies are recognized; one in West and Central Africa east to western Uganda, and south to Angola, and the other across all of the rest of the distribution. Our knowledge of this species’ biology and ecology, especially breeding and foraging behavior, is almost entirely based on detailed studies in KwaZulu Natal, in eastern South Africa, and to a lesser extent elsewhere across the southern Africa subregion, with almost nothing been recorded elsewhere. At least in some regions of the continent, it is probably a migrant, but the extent and nature of these movements are very incompletely known and understood. Buff-spotted Flufftail’s presence is most easily detected by virtue of its unusually deep and far-carrying advertisement call (for such a small bird), although this is mainly (or perhaps exclusively) given during the breeding season in significant parts of the range, meaning that it may frequently go unrecorded at other times.