The mouse-coloured penduline tit or mouse-colored penduline tit (''Anthoscopus musculus'') is a species of bird in the family Remizidae. At in length, it is one of the two shortest birds native to Africa, alongside the tit hylia.

Taxonomy

The mouse-coloured penduline tit was formally described in 1882 by the German ornithologist Gustav Hartlaub under the binomial name ''Aegithalus musculus''. The species is now placed in the

genus Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...

Anthoscopus ''Anthoscopus'' is a genus of birds in the penduline tit family Remizidae. The genus is restricted to Sub-Saharan Africa, where it ranges from the Sahel to South Africa. Unlike many of the Eurasian penduline, these species are not generally bird ...

'' that was introduced in 1851 by the German ornithologist Jean Cabanis. The genus name combines the

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

''anthos'' meaning "blossom" or "flower" with ''skopos'' meaning "searcher". The specific epithet ''musculus'' is Latin meaning "little mouse". The species is considered to be monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.

Distribution and habitat

This species has an extensive range in

Ethiopia Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...

, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania, and

Uganda Uganda, officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the ...

, with an estimated global Extent of Occurrence of 550,000 km². Its natural habitats are dry savannah and subtropical or tropical dry shrubland.

References

External links

* mouse-coloured Birds of East Africa mouse-coloured penduline tit Taxonomy articles created by Polbot {{Remizidae-stub