Platysteiridae – Wattle-eyes & Batises

Platysteiridae is a family of small stout passerine birds of the African tropics. The family contains the wattle-eyes and batises. They were previously classed as a subfamily of the Old World flycatcher family Muscicapidae.

The Platysteiridae are arboreal birds, primarily of the woodlands and forests of sub-Saharan Africa. The family is restricted to mainland Africa and the surrounding islands. The shrike-flycatchers and the genus Dyaphorophyia are birds of dense forest, the rest of the wattle-eyes are found in woodland, and the batises range across all habitats except the densest forests of the Congo Basin and the driest deserts. The pririt batis and pygmy batis are able to live in highly arid environments with some cover, and the white-fronted wattle-eye favours mangrove forests in Angola. Many species in the family have adapted to human altered habitats. The family has its highest diversity around the equatorial regions, with half the known species being located in Tanzania and almost half also ranging in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Kenya.

The family is overwhelmingly sedentary. However, some batis species undertake season migrations as well as some local movements due to changing local conditions.

These insect-eating birds are found in usually open forests or bush. They hunt by flycatching, or by taking prey from the ground like a shrike. The nest is a small neat cup low in a tree or bush.

One species, the banded wattle-eye, is considered threatened by human activities. The species has a restricted range in Cameroon that is vulnerable to forest clearance and is listed as endangered by the IUCN. Two further species are considered near-threatened, the Gabon batis and the white-fronted wattle-eye; both species are threatened by habitat loss. Some species are also very poorly known, and one species, the dark batis, was only identified as a species in 2006.