Endangered
Sharpe's longclaw
Macronyx sharpei
Sharpe's longclaw is a passerine bird in the longclaw family Motacillidae, that also includes the pipits and wagtails.
Appearance
It is 16–17 cm long, with upperparts heavily marked with buff and rufous streaks, yellow underparts, and white outer tail feathers in flight.
Published measurements include mass about 3.48.
Range and habitat
The Sharpe's longclaw is found in the highlands of west and central Kenya. It has a restricted distribution, occurring on the northern slopes of Mount Kenya, the southern slopes of the Aberdares, on the Gishu, Mau and Kinangop Plateaus around the Rift Valley, and the Kenyan slopes of Mount Elgon (possibly the Ugandan slopes as well). The natural the species usually lives in open treeless grassland with short and often tussocky grasses.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
The species forages alone or in pairs, sometimes in small family groups. The Sharpe's longclaw is a monogamous and solitary breeder that defends a territory.
The breeding season is during or after the rains, from March to June, September to October and in December. The species has a brief aerial breeding display, where the bird flies up and then drops, singing rapidly as it drops. The nest is a well-made cup of dried grass lined with roots and placed near the ground at the base of a grass tussock or under a shrub or plant.
In crisis
This bird is endangered, with an estimated population of less than 20,000.
Sharpe's longclaw is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Sharpe's longclaw, Wikidata item Q21964223. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
