Karoo chat Karoo chat The Karoo chat ("Emarginata schlegelii") is a small passerine bird of the Old World flycatcher family Muscicapidae. It is a common resident breeder in southwesternmost Angola, western Namibia and western South Africa. Its habitat is Karoo and desert scrub in the south, extending to the escarpment zone in the north. The first formal description of the Karoo chat was by the Swedish naturalist Johan August Wahlberg in 1855 under the binomial name "Erithacus schlegelii". The species was subsequently placed in the genus "Cercomela" introduced by Charles Lucien Bonaparte in 1856. It was moved to its current genus, "Emarginata",
Karoo sills (see below), creating multiple flat-topped hills, or Karoo Koppies, which are iconic of the Great Karoo. The vegetation of the Upper is similar to the Lower Karoo, so few people make a distinction between the two. The main highway (the N1) and railway line from Cape Town to the north enter the Lower Karoo from the Hex River Valley just before Touws River and follow a course about 50 km south of the Great Escarpment up to Beaufort West. Thereafter, they gradually ascend the Great Escarpment along a broad valley to Three Sisters on the Central Plateau and the