Northern White-crowned Shrike (Eurocephalus ruppelli) [XC300293]
by Bernard BOUSQUET from South of Yabello, Ethiopia (call)
Northern White-crowned Shrike (Eurocephalus ruppelli) [XC300295]
by Frank Lambert from South of Yabello, Ethiopia (call)
Subspecies
Genus formerly included with the helmet-shrikes (Prionopidae), which were at the time treated as a subfamily of Malaconotidae. However, recent studies suggest that it belongs with Laniidae. Forms a superspecies with Southern White-crowned Shrike (Eurocephalus anguitimens). Subspecies erlangeri sometimes considered insufficiently differentiated, and species sometimes treated as monotypic.
Additional proposed subspecies are deckeni (described from Afgoi, in southern Somalia), which is subsumed in erlangeri, and fischeri (Ndjiri, west of Kilimanjaro, in northern Tanzania) and boehmi (Langenburg, north-east of L Malawi, in southern Tanzania), both synonymized with nominate.
The following 2 subspecies are recognised:
ruppelli Bonaparte, 1853 - Extreme south-eastern Sudan, western part of southern Ethiopia, Kenya (except north-east) and northern and central Tanzania.
erlangeri Zedlitz, 1913 - Central and south-eastern Ethiopia, north-eastern Kenya and extreme north-west, central and southern Somalia.
BirdLife International Species Factsheet