Mousebirds – Past and Present

Two members of the West Coast Bird Club, Nigel McDonald and Ron Roefs, have been doing weekly bird counts in the Fossil Park over the past five years and they have recorded all three species of South African mousebirds here with the Whitebacked Mousebird being the most common and it is featured in the photographs taken by Ron. The other two less common species are the Speckled Mousebird and the Redfaced Mousebird.

Mousebirds today are restricted to sub-Saharan Africa. There are six living species in two genera. Here in South Africa, we have three of the living species and one fossil species.

There are at least six other fossil mousebird species that have been found in Europe where the oldest dates back to at least 50 million years ago. The fossil species in South Africa dates back to 5 million years ago and was found in Chemfos Phosphate Mine, Langebaanweg, which is now the West Coast Fossil Park. This new species was described in 1984 and is named Colius hendeyi in honour of Dr Brett Hendey who headed up the palaeontological fieldwork whilst the mine was in operation and whilst he was the head of the Cenozoic Palaeontology Department at the South African Museum in Cape Town, now Iziko Museum.

Those of us who are familiar with mousebirds will either love them or hate them. I certainly love them, but I understand that the main reason that they are disliked by some is because mousebirds like to eat fruit and can cause quite a bit of damage in orchards.

Mousebirds are unique in a few ways and one of the most intriguing things is that they can arrange their toes in different configurations which allows for quite a range of dexterity which is useful for them when they are hanging by one foot on a branch whilst using the other to hold a fruit for feeding.

They tend to live in family groups of up to a dozen or more and huddle together at night for warmth. They can drop their body temperature to undergo torpor and save energy which is another of their unique characteristics. And soon after the sun rises, they will position themselves with their bellies facing the sun to recharge their systems, as shown in the photographs.

Although mousebirds are not particularly colourful and eye-catching they have to be one of the most unusual and fascinating birds with a very long history going back millions of years and one has to admire them for that.  Colius hendeyi is the oldest fossil mousebird in Africa and could possibly be the ancestor of the living Whitebacked Mousebird. 

Thanks to Nigel and Ron for their dedicated support and to Brett Hendey for his pioneering palaeontological fieldwork and to Pat Vickers-Rich who identified the fossil mousebirds from this site in the Fossil Park after she had done a preliminary survey on the entire fossil bird collection in the museum and concluded that this is one of the richest fossil bird sites in the world. Now that is quite a record!