Introduction

The Red-crowned Malimbe was collected by George Latimer Bates, an American naturalist.

Bates visited West Africa in 1895, first to Gabon and later he moved to the south east Cameroon, making a living by farming. In 1905 he settled on the Ja River, calling his farm Bitjie or Bitye (after the Bulu pronunciation of his name). He collected many natural history specimens, especially birds, in his travels and sent many of these to the Natural History Museum in London.

Bates collected a male Red-crowned Malimbe near the River Ja, probably near his farm Bitye, together with Bates's Nightjar Caprimulgus batesi, and these were described as new species by Sharpe. Bates continued observing this malimbe and collecting more specimens. By collecting pairs at the nest, he realised that the females were all-black. By dissecting juveniles Bates realised that they all had an orange crown - females later moult the crown into black feathers.

In 1928 Bates moved to England and wrote a Handbook on the Birds of West Africa (1930).

The Red-crowned Malimbe was first illustrated by Sharpe (1908), showing the male type. The next illustration to be published was a line drawing in Bannerman (1949), showing the male and female.

Scientific citation

Meaning of names

First English name

Alternate names

Collector

Date collected

Locality collected

Type specimens

Juveniles are distinctive, and juveniles of both sexes are sooty brown with an orange crown patch, and horn bill.

Female Malimbe identification in the hand:

• Red-crowned - P10 long (30mm), extends half way down P9;
• Cassin's - P10 short (20mm), not reaching half way down P9.

Distribution. The Red-crowned Malimbe is localized but common, occurring in central Africa. It occurs in Cameroon, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Congo and DRC (see map below, based on Birds of Africa). There are no subspecies of the Red-crowned Malimbe.

Habitat. The Red-crowned Malimbe inhabits primary lowland forest, sometimes in swamp forest, mature secondary forest and orchards.

Food. The Red-crowned Malimbe feeds on caterpillars, grasshoppers, cockoaches, small beetles and insect eggs. Nestlings are given grasshoppers and caterpillars. Birds forage in the canopy, often in dense screens of hanging lianas and clusters of leaves. They occur in pairs or groups of up to 7 adults; and often in mixed-species foraging flocks.

Breeding. The Red-crowned Malimbe is a monogamous, solitary nester. The nest is built collaboratively by up to 6 adults. When the nest is complete, the helpers disappear and only the breeding pair remains. The nest is an untidy, pendent structure made almost entirely of dead, dry plant material. Nest material includes vine tendrils (sometimes spiral ones); interwoven with small, bent or straight twigs and small and large petioles. The egg chamber is suspended by a long anchoring structure from a thin thorny liana stem or tip. There is a short but wide entrance tube. The outer parts of the nest have many outward and downward pointing stiff stems embedded into them. The whole, hedgehog-like nest is thought to be an effective anti-predator structure. The nest is sited above an open airspace, sometimes a path, usually at a height of 8-9m but up to 25m high.

Adults find it difficult to fasten the first dry twigs and tendrils to a hanging vine and most material falls down at the early stages of building. As a result most nests are abandoned during the course of building. Nest-building is by a group of birds that arrive together and work in bouts, birds coming to work at the nest one after the other and calling continuously. Males and females work to the same degree, and a nest takes 2 weeks to complete. Both parents incubate and feed the young. Many nests are destroyed by chimpanzees Pan troglodytes.

The Red-crowned Malimbe roosts in old nests at night and sometimes rests in them by day.