Lanius excubitor elegans Swainson, 1832

Boano, Giovanni, Belemsobgo, Urbain, Silvano, Fabrizio, Hema, Emmanuel M., Belemsobgo, Aristide, Dimobe, Kangbéni & Pavia, Marco, 2022, An annotated checklist of the birds of Burkina Faso, Zoosystema 44 (2), pp. 27-107 : 75

Lanius excubitor elegans Swainson, 1832

LITERATURE. — Dowsett (1993); Balanca & de Visscher (1997); Borrow & Demey (2001, 2014); Balanca et al. (2007); Sinclair & Ryan (2010); Dowsett et al. (2013).

FIELD DATA. — GBIF; WABD.

STATUS. — Afrotropical migrant.

REMARKS. — Often included in L. meridionalis (Temminck, 1820) , now considered monotypic (del Hoyo & Collar, 2016), L. e. elegans is the only subspecies certainly present in Burkina Faso as a scarce dry season visitor ( Balanca & de Visscher 1997; Borrow & Demey 2001). The presence of L. e. leucopygos Erhenberg, 1833, the subspecies breeding in Mali and Niger, in the extreme north of the Burkina Faso is also possible following Borrow & Demey (2014). The taxonomy of the L. excubitor complex is very complicated and not fully resolved ( Olsson et al. 2010), and the assessment of Burkina Faso subspecies needs revision.