Réunion stonechat

Species of bird

The Réunion stonechat (Saxicola tectes) is a species of stonechat, endemic to the island of Réunion. This small passerine bird is common in clearings and open mountain bushlands there up to 2600 metres above sea level, including in the plains around Piton de la Fournaise.

The Réunion stonechat was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the flycatchers in the genus Muscicapa and coined the binomial name Muscicapa tectes. Gmelin based his account on "Le gobe mouche de l'Ilse de Bourbon" that had been described and illustrated in 1760 by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson. The Réunion stonechat is now placed in the genus Saxicola that was introduced in 1802 by the German naturalist Johann Matthäus Bechstein. The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised. The scientific name is from Saxicola, "rock dweller", from Latin saxum, a rock + incola, dwelling in; and tectes, onomatopoetic Neo Latin after the species' call, from the Réunion Creole name tec tec. Its ancestors probably diverged from the sub Saharan African lineage as it spread across the continent some 2–2.5 mya during the Late Pliocene.

Overall, the male is black above and white below, but also with a white supercilium (sometimes absent), half collar, and greater covert patch, and a variable sized orange patch on the breast. Females differ from males in being browner above, more buff toned below, and often lacking the white greater covert patch. The white throat and (usually white) supercilium are the most prominent external differences from the African stonechat S. torquatus, which has a wholly black head including the throat and supercilium.