Scientific name: Euplectes capensis
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| Female and non-breeding |
The breeding male is black apart from his bright yellow lower back, rump, and shoulder patches, and brown edging to the wing feathers. He has a short crest, thick conical black bill, and a relatively short tail. In non-breeding plumage, the black plumage is replaced by heavily streaked buffy-brown, and the bill is pale. The yellow shoulders and rump remain, and are a distinction from the female which lacks the contrasting colour patches. The juveniles and females are notoriously difficult to identify in the field, appearing identical to the juveniles and females of several other bishops and widowbirds as well as some seadeaters.
Here it is fairly common in north-central Mozambique, Zimbabwe and in South Africa along the Escarpment, through Lesotho and the Eastern Cape to the Western Cape. It occupies a wide array of habitats, including fynbos, cultivated land, dense vegetation along streams, forest edges and montane grassland.
It eats seeds supplemented with insects, doing most of its foraging on the ground and in patches of grass.
