Gorgeous Bushshrike

The gorgeous bushshrike (Telophorus viridis) is a brilliantly coloured but secretive African bushshrike, about 19 cm long and weighing 36–37 g. Adult males have olive-green upperparts, a yellow forehead and eyebrow, a bright red throat and upper breast and a broad black breast-band above the yellow to orange belly. Females are similar but generally greener and have a narrower black breast-band. In the southern quadricolor form, reddish-orange also appears around the base of the tail and on the undertail coverts.

Despite its striking plumage, the bird is rarely seen in the open for long because it spends much of its time inside dense vegetation.

The taxonomy and English names have changed over time. Forms formerly known as Perrin’s bushshrike and four-coloured bushshrike have sometimes been treated as separate species, but the current AviList treatment includes them within one species, Telophorus viridis, with four recognised subspecies.

Birds in eastern South Africa and Eswatini belong to T. v. quadricolor, including the individuals photographed on this page.

Gorgeous bushshrikes favour dense thickets and woodland with a well-developed shrub layer, including riverine woodland, wooded drainage lines, forest edges and coastal evergreen forest. They are resident and remain closely associated with thick cover.

The diet consists mainly of insects and other arthropods, including beetles, caterpillars, mantids, wasps and bees. Much of the foraging takes place in the canopy, where birds move methodically through foliage and glean prey from leaves and branches, usually without leaving dense cover for long.

Gorgeous bushshrikes are usually encountered alone or in pairs and can remain almost invisible even when calling only a few metres away. When approached, a bird may freeze and become silent rather than moving into the open.

The loud, carrying whistle is therefore one of the best ways to locate the species. The call is often rendered as kong-koit or kong-kon-koweet and can be repeated for long periods from within cover. It can make the bird seem much more common by ear than by sight. The contrast between its powerful calls and extremely secretive behaviour is one of its most characteristic field traits.

Both adults build a shallow cup nest from fine twigs, rootlets, leaf stalks and grass, sometimes binding the material with spider web. The nest is usually placed low in a thorny tree or dense tangle, often about 1–2 m above the ground, where surrounding foliage provides strong concealment.

One to three eggs are laid, and both parents incubate for about 13–14 days. Both adults also care for the chicks after hatching. In one documented nesting, the young left the nest after 12 days, but how long chicks usually remain in the nest is still poorly known. Southern African breeding records peak in spring and early summer, particularly from October to December.

The gorgeous bushshrike is classified as least concern on the IUCN Red List. It has a broad but patchy African distribution and remains locally common in suitable dense woodland and thicket.

The global population has not been quantified precisely. Clearance and fragmentation of dense thicket and riverine woodland can reduce local habitat, but no major range-wide decline is currently known.