Orange-breasted Bushshrike (Chlorophoneus sulfureopectus) [XC518606]
by Frank Lambert from Mkhuze Game Reserve, Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa (song)
Orange-breasted Bushshrike (Chlorophoneus sulfureopectus) [XC773269]
by Maarten Sluijter from Mbombela, Ehlanzeni District Municipality, Mpumalanga, South Africa (song)
Subspecies
Genus sometimes subsumed in Malaconotus or in Chlorophoneus. Probably closely allied with Many-coloured Bush-Shrike (Chlorophoneus multicolor), but also closely resembles the much larger, heavy-billed, savanna-dwelling Malaconotus blanchoti. Birds in eastern coastal lowlands described as additional subspecies suahelicus (southern Somalia south to central Mozambique) and terminus (south-eastern Tanzania south to south-eastern South Africa), but differ only in slightly smaller size from similis and both are synonymized with latter. A specimen from Entebbe (Uganda), named as Telophorus andaryae (Chlorophoneus andaryae), was probably a hybrid between present species and Bocage's Bush-Shrike (Chlorophoneus bocagei).
The following 2 subspecies are recognised:
sulfureopectus (Lesson, 1830) - Southern Senegal and northern Sierra Leone east to Central African Republic, western Sudan, northern DRCongo and western Uganda.
similis (A. Smith, 1836) - Southern Sudan, Ethiopia, southern Somalia, south-western and eastern DRCongo, eastern Uganda and Kenya south to Angola, northern Namibia, northern and eastern Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and eastern South Africa.
BirdLife International Species Factsheet