White-winged black tit

The white-winged black tit (Melaniparus leucomelas) is a passerine bird in the tit family Paridae. It is also known as the white-winged tit, dark-eyed black tit or northern black tit.^[2] The species was first described by Eduard Rüppell in 1840.

White-winged black tit
Nominate race in Ethiopia
M. l. subsp. insignis in Angola
Conservation status
Least Concern  (IUCN 3.1)[1]
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Passeriformes
Family:	Paridae
Genus:	Melaniparus
Species:	M. leucomelas
Binomial name
Melaniparus leucomelas (Rüppell, 1840)
Map showing ranges of two races, respectively north and south of equator
Synonyms
Parus leucomelas

Description

It is mainly black with a white wing patch, but differs from the more northern white-shouldered tit (Melaniparus guineensis) with which it sometimes considered conspecific in that it has a dark eye.

Range and races

It is found in central Africa, from Angola in the west to Ethiopia in the east. There are two races:^[3]

• M. l. subsp. leucomelas Rüppell, 1840 – Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan and South Sudan
• M. l. subsp. insignis Cabanis, 1880 – African equator to southern subtropics

Taxonomy

The white-winged black tit was formerly one of the many species in the genus Parus but was moved to Melaniparus after a molecular phylogenetic analysis published in 2013 showed that the members of the new genus formed a distinct clade.^[4][5]