
Photo: Chris Oldnall · CC BY-SA 4.0
Hemipus picatus
Diet
Insects, gleaned in the mid-canopy
Habitat
Forest
The bar-winged flycatcher-shrike is a small, upright-perching bird with a black cap and black wings contrasting with a white body, a white slash across the wing and a white rump. The bill has a hooked tip. Males are velvety black and females greyish-brown, but the pattern varies between populations: in some both sexes have brown backs, and in the Sri Lankan form the sexes look alike. The tail is black with white outer feathers. Young birds have a broken white-and-grey pattern like lichen (Wikipedia, general species account).
It hunts insects in the mid-canopy of forest, often in mixed-species flocks, perching upright and flying out to glean prey. Its call is a rapid, high tsit-it-it-it or whriri-whirriri, sometimes a sharp chip, and in Sri Lanka pairs have been reported to duet with precision (Wikipedia, general species account).