Southern Black Tit

The southern black tit, unlike parids of the Northern Hemisphere or other local species, is almost entirely monotone in colour and sexually somewhat dimorphic, with the female being greyish and the male very distinctly blue-black in colour. It can be distinguished from the white-winged tit and Carp's tit by having no white rim in its tail and is around 16 centimetres (6 in) in total length including the tail.

It occurs chiefly in tropical and subtropical savanna woodland, in a semicircular arc from Angola to the Eastern Cape, South Africa. It prefers woodland dominated by broad-leaved trees, most importantly miombo, Combretum species, and Burkea africana. It is especially common in the woodlands of western Zimbabwe, where densities can reach as high as fifty birds per square kilometre.

Like all tits, it feeds chiefly on insects, and is a voracious consumer of wasps in its favoured habitat; however, it has unusually for a parid been known to take nectar and fruiting figs.