Welcome.
Pied bush chat is a small, sparrow-sized resident bird of Bengaluru. Males are black, with a white patch on their wings and have white vents. Females are reddish brown. These can easily be mistaken for Indian robin birds. They mostly live in open grasslands, scrublands and can be spotted near lakes, foraging for insects. These are well adapted to the urban landscape.
These are one of the finest singing birds we have in our city. They are also the early-risers. If you have heard long, melodious songs of the birds in the morning starting around 4:15 am in the summer months and around 5:15 am in the winters, you most likely have heard the songs of these birds, especially of males. Male birds generally prefer to perch on short trees and shrubs like castor seed plants and other thorny bushes and sing their hearts out. Females sing too, but not as loudly as their male counterparts.
Breeding season for these beauties falls between February and June. They build their nests inside ground holes in grasslands or holes in the walls, closer to the ground. They use grass, feathers and animal hair etc for cushioning inside their nests. As their nesting season overlaps with peak summer, which means very dry grass in the grasslands, they and their nests face the threat of fire, along with the threat of usual predators.
We need to preserve the open grasslands, if we are to preserve their sweet songs.
Akhila Hegde
Pied bush chat is a small, sparrow-sized resident bird of Bengaluru. Males are black, with a white patch on their wings and have white vents. Females are reddish brown. These can easily be mistaken for Indian robin birds. They mostly live in open grasslands, scrublands and can be spotted near lakes, foraging for insects. These are well adapted to the urban landscape.
These are one of the finest singing birds we have in our city. They are also the early-risers. If you have heard long, melodious songs of the birds in the morning starting around 4:15 am in the summer months and around 5:15 am in the winters, you most likely have heard the songs of these birds, especially of males. Male birds generally prefer to perch on short trees and shrubs like castor seed plants and other thorny bushes and sing their hearts out. Females sing too, but not as loudly as their male counterparts.
Breeding season for these beauties falls between February and June. They build their nests inside ground holes in grasslands or holes in the walls, closer to the ground. They use grass, feathers and animal hair etc for cushioning inside their nests. As their nesting season overlaps with peak summer, which means very dry grass in the grasslands, they and their nests face the threat of fire, along with the threat of usual predators.
We need to preserve the open grasslands, if we are to preserve their sweet songs.
Akhila Hegde
