Erythrogenys hypoleucos

Kaeng Krachan National Park, Thailand

This blog was the outcome of a conversation on “Babblers“ and “Warblers“ I had with good friends and birding companions and it sparked the idea to write about the various babblers, warblers, parrotbills, white-eyes, fulvettas, laughingthrushes and their allies I have had the good fortune to observe and photograph across Asia Pacific. This write up, however, focuses only on the Large Scimitar Babbler. To read about my other babblers, I have done a collection here: Old World Babblers.

The Old World Babblers are a family of mostly Old World passerine birds rather diverse in size and coloration, characterised by soft fluffy plumage. These are birds of tropical areas, with the greatest variety in Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent. The timaliids are one of two unrelated groups of birds known as babblers, the other being the Australasian babblers of the family Pomatostomidae (also known as pseudo-babblers). Morphological diversity is rather high; most species resemble warblers, jays or thrushes.

In an earlier blog I have included the genus of passerines known as Pnoepyga endemic to southern and south eastern Asia. The Pnoepyga contains five species with its members known as cupwings or wren-babblers and they have long been placed in the babbler family Timaliidae. But a 2009 study of the DNA of the families Timaliidae and the Old World warblers (Sylviidae) found no support for the placement of the genus in either family, prompting the authors to erect a new monogeneric family, the Pnoepygidae.

These are all part of the superfamily Sylvioidea, one of at least three major clades within the Passerida along with the Muscicapoidea and Passeroidea. It contains about 1300 species including the Old World warblers, Old World babblers, swallows, larks and bulbuls. Members of the clade are found worldwide, with fewer species present in the Americas. Some of the families within the Sylvioidea have been greatly redefined. In particular, the Old World warbler family Sylviidae and Old World babbler family Timaliidae were used as waste-bin taxa and included many species which have turned out not to be closely related. Several new families have been created and some species have been moved from one family to another - to the extent that when I took some of these photos I had different names for them to what they are currently named in this article.

The Babbler group:

• Sylviidae: sylviid babblers (34 species)

• Paradoxornithidae: parrotbills (37 species)

• Zosteropidae: white-eyes (141 species)

• Timaliidae: babblers, scimitar babblers (54 species)

• Pellorneidae: fulvettas, ground babblers (60 species)

• Alcippeidae: Alcippe fulvettas (10 species)

• Leiothrichidae: laughingthrushes and allies (133 species)

This list is an extract from the list of 25 families is based on the molecular phylogenetic study published by Silke Fregin and colleagues in 2012 and the revisions of the babbler group by Cai et al (2019) The family sequence and number of species is from the online list of world birds maintained by Frank Gill and David Donsker on behalf of the International Ornithological Committee (IOC).

Illustrated in this blog is one of the Timaliidae I was fortunate to observe and photograph at the Kaeng Krachan National Park in Thailand. All these images are from an erstwhile poachers hide in very low light to get in close to the birds and all of them involved long periods of wait and heaps of patience. With some birds like the Pygmy Wren-Babbler I got lucky as the bird came in very close and actually went past me as it foraged and I was able to “fill the frame” from about a foot away. But to be honest, I prefer the photos with some ambience around the bird because it gives an idea of where and in some cases how the bird tends to forage and also allows the subject in the image to breathe.

Published on the NatGeo & Wild Bird Revolution blog on forests on November 22, 2019

Timaliidae

Timaliids are small to medium birds. They have strong legs, & many are quite terrestrial. They typically have generalised bills, similar to those of a thrush or warbler, except for the scimitar babblers which, as their name implies, have strongly decurved bills. Most have predominantly brown plumage, with minimal difference between the sexes, but many more brightly coloured species also exist.

This group is not strongly migratory, and most species have short rounded wings, and a weak flight. They live in lightly wooded or scrubland environments, ranging from swamp to near-desert. They are primarily insectivorous, although many will also take berries, and the larger species will even eat small lizards and other vertebrates.

Typical babblers live in communities of around a dozen birds, jointly defending a territory. Many even breed communally, with a dominant pair building a nest, and the remainder helping to defend and rear their young. Young males remain with the group, while females move away to find a new group, and thus avoid inbreeding. They make nests from twigs, and hide them in dense vegetation.

The Timaliids are a family of 56 species divided into the following ten genera: Erythrogenys, Pomatorhinus, Spelaeornis, Stachyris, Cyanoderma, Dumetia, Mixornis, Macronus, Timalia, Melanocichla.

The focus today is on the Large Scimitar Babbler which comes in Erythrogenys - a genus of scimitar babblers, jungle birds with long down curved bills from tropical Asia.. But first a little bit about Kaeng Krachan National Park.

Kaeng Krachan National Park

Kaeng Krachan National Park is the largest national park of Thailand on the border with Burma, contiguous with the Tanintharyi Nature Reserve. It is located in Phetchaburi and Prachuap Khiri Khan Provinces, about 60 km from Phetchaburi and 75 km from Hua Hin. Covering an area of 2,914 km² it is the largest national park in Thailand. The park is part of the Western Forex Complex that covers 18,730 km² across 19 protected sites between Myanmar and Thailand, bounded by the Tanintharyi Nature Reserve along Myanmar's border to the west. A dense rain forest on the eastern slope of the Tenasserim Mountain Range where the Pranburi & Phetchaburi Rivers originate. Both rivers originate from the Tanaosri Mountain Range. In the north, Phetchaburi River flows into Kaeng Krachan Dam and flows further east all the way out to the Gulf of Thailand. Pran Buri River flows south to Prachuap Khiri Khan Province, into Pran Buri Reservoir and out to the Gulf of Thailand.

The park was declared a reserve in 1964 and on 12 June 1981 it became the 28th national park of Thailand. Originally covering an area of 2,478 km2, it was enlarged in December 1984 to include the boundary area between Phetchaburi and Prachuap Khiri Khan Provinces, an additional 300,000 rai. The park has been included in the list of ASEAN Heritage Parks. Since 2011, Thailand has proposed that Unesco designate Kaeng Krachan National Park a world heritage site.

Mammal species such as leopards, clouded leopards, bears, stump-tailed macaques, sambar deer, barking deer, elephants, dholes, golden jackals, gaurs, serows, yellow-throated martens, various civet species, crab-eating mongooses and many others can be found in the park.

Large Scimitar Babbler

The large scimitar babbler (Erythrogenys hypoleucos) is a species of bird in the family Timaliidae. It is found in Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forest and subtropical or tropical moist montane forest. This specimen was photographed in the dense forests of the Kaeng Krachan National Park in Thailand.

It is a handsome and slightly primal-looking babbler of wooded areas, thick fields, and bamboo tangles, wherever there is extensive cover. The angular chestnut crescent behind the ear, combined with the smattering of silver spots behind it, a white throat, and dark eyes, is unique. It forages on the ground and in the understory, usually in pairs or small flocks and does not usually form large flocks as do many other scimitar-babblers.

My photos of the Large Scimitar Babbler were published on the Wild Bird Trust and National Geographic Blog on the Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week: Forest Habitats - Large Scimitar Babbler & Lesser Necklaced Laughingthrush, Ban Nong Nam, Kaeng Krachan National Park, Thailand - November 22, 2019. View my other publications.

Status: Least Concern

Now for the photos of this handsome and slightly primal-looking babbler of wooded areas.

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This is but a glimpse into the beautiful world of the babblers and the tremendous variety in the species and that they are still being discovered. Do subscribe if you liked what you saw and if you would like to continue to read these insights into the beautiful birds and animals inhabiting our planet.

The bird songs I have leveraged in this blog were sourced from my favourite bird song site Xeno-Canto and are with due credit to the people who spent time and effort recording the songs.

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