Common Stone Chat
(African Stone Chat)
Saxicola torquatus
Fly catching in open areas adjacent to forest plantation and grazing pasture. Menangai Crater, Rift Valley, Kenya. March 2013.
From Wikipedia: The males (left) have a black head, a white half-collar, a black back, a white rump, and a black tail; the wings are black with a white patch on the top side of the inner wing. The upper breast is usually dark orange-red, with a sharp or gradual transition to white or pale orange on the lower breast and belly depending on subspecies. In a few, black replaces the orange breast feathers in part or entirely. Females (below) have brown rather than black above and on the head with an indistinct paler eyebrow line, chestnut-buff rather than orange below, and less white on the wings. Both sexes' plumage is somewhat duller and streakier outside the breeding season.
Muscicapidae -- Old World Flycatcher Family
Books:
- Birds of Kenya and Northern Tanzania by Zimmerman et al.
- Birds of East Africa by Stevenson and Fanshawe