Bronze-winged Courser

Rhinoptilus chalcopterus

The Bronze-winged Courser is a nocturnal bird with a solitary, nomadic lifestyle and as such not seen very often. They inhabit savanna-woodland type habitats with bare patches, on which they hunt for a wide variety of insects and other invertebrates in the dark. They breed mainly in the months of spring as monogamous pairs nesting in a simple hollow scraped in gravel or sand and raising clutches of usually only 2 chicks that hatch after an incubation period of 4 weeks.

In South Africa, Bronze-winged Coursers occur mainly in Kwazulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, Gauteng and Limpopo, while they’re also found widely over the continent south of the Sahara and are considered to be of least concern.