The Reunion Stonechat is a species of stonechat

Saxicola

The genus Saxicola , the stonechats or chats, is a genus of 15 species of small passerine birds restricted to the Old World...

, endemic to the island of Réunion

Réunion

Réunion is a French island with a population of about 800,000 located in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar, about south west of Mauritius, the nearest island.Administratively, Réunion is one of the overseas departments of France...

. This small passerine

Passerine

A passerine is a bird of the order Passeriformes, which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds or, less accurately, as songbirds, the passerines form one of the most diverse terrestrial vertebrate orders: with over 5,000 identified species, it has roughly...

 bird

Bird

Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

 is common in clearings and open mountain bushlands there. Overall, the male is black above and white below, but also with a white supercilium

Supercilium

The supercilium is a plumage feature found on the heads of some bird species. It is a stripe which runs from the base of the bird's beak above its eye, finishing somewhere towards the rear of the bird's head. Also known as an "eyebrow", it is distinct from the eyestripe, which is a line which runs...

 (sometimes absent), half-collar, and greater covert patch, and a variable-sized orange patch on the breast. Females differ from males in being browner above, more buff-toned below, and often lacking the white greater covert patch. The white throat and (usually white) supercilium are the most prominent external differences from the African Stonechat

African Stonechat

The African Stonechat is a species of the Old World flycatcher family , inhabiting sub-Saharan Africa and adjacent regions. Like the other chats, it was long assigned to the thrush family , to which the chats are convergent...

 S. torquatus, which has a wholly black head including the throat and supercilium.

Taxonomy

It is a member of the Common Stonechat

Common Stonechat

Common Stonechat is the name used for the Saxicola species Saxicola torquatus when this is treated in its broad sense.It is however now more widely considered to be a superspecies consisting of several related but distinct species, which are outwardly fairly similar but genetically distinct and...

 superspecies

Superspecies

A superspecies is a group of at least two more or less distinctive species with approximately parapatric distributions. Not all species complexes, whether cryptices or ring species are superspecies, and vice versa, but many are...

, but it is distinct, together with its closest relative the Madagascar Stonechat

Madagascar Stonechat

The Madagascar Stonechat Saxicola sibilla is a species of stonechat, endemic to Madagascar. It is a small bird, closely similar to the African Stonechat in both plumage and behaviour, but distinguished from it by the more extensive black on the throat and minimal orange-red on the upper breast of...

 S. sibilla being insular derivatives of the African Stonechat. Its ancestors probably diverged from the sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa as a geographical term refers to the area of the African continent which lies south of the Sahara. A political definition of Sub-Saharan Africa, instead, covers all African countries which are fully or partially located south of the Sahara...

n lineage as it spread across the continent some 2-2.5 mya during the Late Pliocene.

The etymology

Etymology

Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...

 of the scientific name is from Saxicola, "rock-dweller", from Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 saxum, a rock + incola, dwelling in; and tectes, onomatopoetic New Latin

New Latin

The term New Latin, or Neo-Latin, is used to describe the Latin language used in original works created between c. 1500 and c. 1900. Among other uses, Latin during this period was employed in scholarly and scientific publications...

 after the species' call, from the Réunion Creole

Réunion Creole

Réunion Creole or Reunionese Creole , or Créole Réunionnais in French is a creole language spoken on Réunion...

name tec-tec.