Indian scimitar babbler
species of bird
The Indian scimitar babbler (Pomatorhinus horsfieldii) is an Old World babbler. It is found in peninsular India in a range of forest habitats. They are most often detected by their distinctive calls, which include an antiphonal duet by a pair of birds. They are often hard to see as they forage through dense vegetation. The long, curved yellow, scimitar-shaped bills give them their name. It has been treated in the past as a subspecies of the white-browed scimitar babbler which is found along the Himalayas but now separated into two species, the peninsular Indian species and the Sri Lanka scimitar babbler (Pomatorhinus melanurus).
Description
The most distinctive feature of this 22 cm long bird is the long down-curved yellow bill which is blackish at the base of the upper mandible. It has a striking head pattern, with a long white supercilium above a broad black band through the eye. The white throat and breast contrast with the dark greyish brown on the upperside and dark grey to black on most of the underside. The tail is broad, long and graduated.
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This entry incorporates text from “Indian scimitar babbler” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.