White-crowned Shrikes at Santillana del Mar, 13/06/15

Eurocephalus sp.

Not labelled and none of either species of the genus are listed on Zootierliste - does anyone know how to separate the two? They\'re allopatric so having to ID them from plumage doesn\'t seem to have come up on the Internet!

Comparing illustrations in the birds of southern africa and bird of east africa, I am quite sure they are southern white crowned shrikes given the large amount of white all over the head and the large amount of white on the underparts and the white on the chin extending to under the eye.

I actually started looking at it before I saw lintworm's comment and I came to the opposite conclusion of them being Eurocephalus ruppelli.

I have compared the illustrations of both taxa on the HBW plate (the on line version, but it's the same as the print one) and it seems that southern should have a grey wash all the way to half way up the belly which these appear not to have, but they do have dark grey/brown patches on the sides of the belly which Northerns have on the HBW plate.

The dark bit behind the eyes and down the side of the head is shown to be dark brown in Southerns on the HBW plate and black in Northerns. To me it looks to be black in the birds in the picture.

The other difference comparing the HBW illustrations is that with Southern the base of the tail is dark grey and in Northern is pure white. But you can't see this in the above picture so do you have a picture that shows this?

After looking again and also comparing with my own pictures from a northern white shrike from Kenya, Laughingdove seems to be right, especially concerning the brown patches on the belly, which are more prominent in the illustration then in birds on pictures and therefore mislead me...

A couple of extra shots with slightly different views:

The second of the attached pictures also supports the identification of Northern due to the White rump.

This is confirmed by the HBW plate and also by the illustration in Shrikes and Bush-Shrikes by Tony Harris and Kim Franklin which also says (in the text about Northern White-crowned Shrike Eurocephalus rueppelli) "It is similar to Southern White-crowned Shrike Eurocephalus anguitimens but range is separate. Latter is larger, and lacks white belly and rump"

So I'm quite confident that it is Eurocephalus rueppelli especially on the basis of the white rump in the attached picture.

LaughingDove said:

This is confirmed by the HBW plate and also by the illustration in Shrikes and Bush-Shrikes by Tony Harris and Kim Franklin which also says (in the text about Northern White-crowned Shrike Eurocephalus rueppelli) "It is similar to Southern White-crowned Shrike Eurocephalus anguitimens but range is separate. Latter is larger, and lacks white belly and rump"

Click to expand...

Good enough for me - thanks guys!