Colours of Wildlife: Orange-throated Longclaw

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Orange-throated Longclaw

Willem is a wildlife artist based in South Africa. He says "My aim is simply to express the beauty and wonder that is in Nature, and to heighten people's appreciation of plants, animals and the wilderness. Not everything I paint is African! Though I've never been there, I'm also fascinated by Asia and I've done paintings of Asian rhinos and birds as well. I may in future do some of European, Australian and American species too. I'm fascinated by wild things from all over the world! I mainly paint in watercolours. . . but actually many media including 'digital' paintings with the computer!"

Orange-Throated Longclaw by Willem


Here now is a species with a very descriptive name! The Orange-throated (or Cape) Longclaw, Macronyx capensis, does indeed have an orange throat, and amazingly long claws on the rear toe of each foot. The scientific name means 'big claw of the Cape'. It doesn't only occur in the Cape provinces, though, but throughout most of South Africa and also in central and eastern Zimbabwe. In Afrikaans, longclaws are called 'kalkoentjies' or 'little turkeys' on account of their bright throat colours. The orange-throated longclaw is a striking bird, a little bit shy – it's hard to get really close to it, as it is very wary – and thus not frequently seen well. It's the size of a small thrush, reaching 20 cm/8" in head-to-tail length, omitting the long claw! Longclaws are birds of grasslands and open, grassy savannahs.

Longclaws, Wagtails and Pipits of the World


The pipit, longclaw and wagtail family is small in species number (compared to some other songbird families) but of world-wide occurrence. Pipits even occur on the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia. Wagtails are very familiar birds in South Africa, often seen on lawns in cities and towns. They very typically wag their tails up and down as they walk about. Pipits are much more unassuming. Most species are very drably coloured, and occur in regions of grassland and scrub, only a few entering woodland or forest. In Africa, pipits present some of the toughest ID-challenges to bird-watchers, most species looking almost identical.


Longclaws are aberrant pipits. They're larger, bolder, and more strikingly plumaged than most pipits, and are restricted to Africa. All the longclaws have black or streaky gorgets on their throats, outlining a brightly-coloured patch that can be yellow, orange, pinkish or reddish-buff. All of them also have the long rear claws, but the length varies, those of the orange-throated longclaw together with the closely related yellow-throated longclaw being the longest. Strangely enough, we don't know why they have such long claws! They don't use the claws for clambering over vegetation, as the long-toed jacanas (also known as lilytrotters) do. They simply walk on the bare ground most of the time. They often perch on bushes or trees, in which case the claws don't seem to encumber them. Similar long claws are found in some species of lark, which are ground-living birds very similar to pipits, though not particularly closely related to them. In North America, two species of meadowlark (which are not larks at all but in the cowbird, blackbird, grackle, oropendola, cacique, bobolink, and American oriole family, the Icteridae) look almost exactly like yellow-throated longclaws, only being slightly larger. The phenomenon where not-closely-related species come to look the same, is called convergent evolution, and happens a lot in species that share similar habitats and ways of life, irrespective of genetic relationships.


In South Africa, orange-throated longclaws are the most widely distributed and frequently seen longclaws. They occur in short grass over most of the country except the driest desert regions. They are especially abundant on the high-lying, central grassy plateau, or 'highveld'. They are wary and will not allow themselves to be too closely approached. But they are not hard to find where they occur. The easiest way to find a longclaw is when you hear it calling. The most typically heard call is a wheezy, nasal mewing, uttered by a bird perched on a bush, fence, termite hill or big rock. This is likely an alarm call, a sign that the longclaw saw you and is alert to any possible danger you might pose. Another call is a thin 'tsweet' contact call, by which longclaws stay in touch with each other, and a short, chirpy song, by which they proclaim their territory. They may sing while perched prominently to show their orange throats, or while making short display flights over their territories. Their long legs and big feet dangle down as they fly, and they also display their white outer-tail feathers.


When not alarmed, longclaws will walk with long strides amidst the grass seeking small critters to eat. Their thin bills are adapted to pecking up insects such as the numerous small grasshoppers and caterpillars that eat the grass and other plants. They will scratch open the new tunnels of termites to get at these tasty, soft-bodied insects. While they mostly seek food on the ground, they fly well and sometimes catch insects in flight.


Like pipits, longclaws nest on the ground. They make a cup with dry grass, hidden between or inside tufts of grass. They line the cup with fine rootlets. The female lays three to four eggs that are well-camouflaged with spots and blotches. It seems that it's mostly the female that incubates the eggs. The chicks hatch after about two weeks. The insides of their mouths is bright pink-red and they gape widely when their parents approach with food. The parents also remove the chicks' droppings, which conveniently come out wrapped in a membrane. They also lure possible predators away from the nests and the chicks, by acting as if they are injured. The chicks leave the nest after about 16 or 17 days, at which stage they can't fly yet. We know very little about how the parents care for them beyond this point, since they are very wary and difficult to approach.


At the moment, orange-throated longclaws are very widespread and abundant. The grasslands on which they live, though, are under threat in many places. Much of South Africa's pristine grasslands have been turned to farmland, to which longclaws can't adapt as easily as some other bird species. Climate change brings two potential threats. As carbon levels rise in the atmosphere, more woody plants grow – it's a simple case that more carbon in the air enables plants that deposit wood, which is largely carbon, to grow more easily. Along with overgrazing, this causes many grasslands to be slowly invaded by trees and shrubs. And then, as a response to global climate change, people are urged to plant trees – since these absorb carbon from the air – so additional trees are being planted by people, especially in grassland regions since that's where there's room for the extra trees. But of course then the grassland is no longer grassland, it's woodland or forest, and no longer habitable for pure grassland species. In Africa, a very large slice of our biodiversity comes from grassland species, whether plants, reptiles, birds or mammals, and so we must carefully guard the pristine grassland areas that remain.

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