The southern fiscal, common fiscal or fiscal shrike is a member of the shrike family found through most of Sub-Saharan Africa. It is also sometimes named jackie hangman or butcher bird due to its habit of impaling its prey on acacia thorns to store the food for later consumption. It was previously lumped together with the northern fiscal. Together they were known as the common fiscal.
Taxonomy
In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the southern fiscal in his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected from the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. He used the French nameLa pie-griesche du Cap de Bonne Espérance and the Latin Lanius capitis Bonae Spei. Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson. One of these was the southern fiscal. Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the current binomial nameLanius collaris and cited Brisson's work. The specific namecollaris is Latin for "of the neck. Five subspecies are recognised.
L. c. aridicolus Clancey, 1955 – south western Angola and north western Namibia
L. c. collaris Linnaeus, 1766 – extreme southern Namibia, southern, central and eastern South Africa, Swaziland, Lesotho, and extreme southern Mozambique, Zambia, northern Botswana, and possibly also extreme south western Tanzania and extreme north eastern Namibia
L. c. marwitzi Reichenow, 1901 Uhehe fiscal – north eastern, central and south eastern Tanzania, northern Malawi
L. c. pyrrhostictus Holub & Pelzeln, 1882 – extreme north eastern Botswana, southern Zimbabwe, north eastern and eastern South Africa, and south western Mozambique
L. c. subcoronatus A. Smith, 1841 – extreme south east Angola, Namibia, Botswana, south western Zimbabwe, and northern South Africa
Description
This is a fairly distinctive 21–23-cm long passerine with white underparts and black upperparts extending from the top of the head down to the tail. The bird has a characteristic white "V" on the back and a relatively long black tail with white outer feathers and white tips on the other feathers. The bill, eyes and legs are black. Adult male and female common fiscals are quite similar except for the rufous lower flank of the female. The calls are a jumbled mix of shrike-like swizzling sounds including some imitations and a harsh Dzzzttt-dzzzt-dzzzt alarm call. Most of those calls however are either threatening or alarm calls. The species sometimes produces a surprisingly sweet, quiet song, although such song, however sweet it sounds, generally is either territorial or pair-bonding in function.
Distribution and habitat
The southern fiscal lives in a wide range of habitats from grassland with fences for perching to acacia thornveld or even woodland, but avoids very dense habitats where its hunting would be impaired.
Behaviour
The southern fiscal is usually solitary and hunts insects and small rodents from an exposed perch or the tops of shrubs. Territorial size is directly related to the density of hunting perches. Installing more artificial perches causes the fiscal to reduce its territory size and allow more birds in the affected range. In eastern Africa, the southern fiscal is a major predator of the plain tigerbutterfly.
