Conservation

Eyebrowed Thrush at Iringole Kavu – A new bird for Kerala

P.B. Samkumar

Eyebrowed Thrush | Photo: P.B. Samkumar

Sree Bhagavathi Kavu at Iringole, in Pattal Village near Perumbavoor, popularly known as Iringole Kavu, is a sacred grove devoutly protected and preserved by its believers. Iringole Kavu is an evergreen forest patch with an area of over 20 hectares and is home to many avian, reptilian and mammalian species including endemic species also. Chandrashekara & Sankar (1998) found that, when compared with the evergreen forests of the Western Ghats for parameters like stem density, basal area and species diversity of trees, the values obtained for this sacred grove, with 51 species of trees, is within the range of those obtained for other forests.

On 10 December 2017, I reached Iringole Kavu at 11.30 am for birding. There was a pond in the Kavu, where almost all birds in the Kavu come to drink water and at 12.40 pm, I was birding near the pond. Suddenly, a bird of the size of a Malabar Woodshrike Tephrodornis sylvicola flew in from the woods and momentarily perched on a branch of a small tree on the other side of a mud path. I managed to take a photograph of this bird before it flew away. It had a prominent white supercilium and a white crescent-shaped mark under the eye. The orange breast and the white under-belly also were conspicuous. When the picture was posted in the Whatsapp group named ‘Birders Sans Borders’, the bird was identified as Eyebrowed Thrush Turdus obscurus by Aadhithyan, another member of this group and was later confirmed by Sathyan Meppayur, an experienced birder. Raphy Kallettumkara, Abhilash Raveendran and I combed the place thoroughly on the next day but could not find the thrush. Despite checking the area several times in the two succeeding weeks there was no trace of the bird.

This is the first sighting of this species from Kerala though it had been recorded elsewhere from peninsular India before. This bird was reported as early as in 1924 from Belgaum (Baker1924); in 1983 from Northwest Karnataka (Ali & Ripley 1983); in1984 by C. Robson at Ootacamund (Harrap & Redman 1987); in 1985 from Point Calimere (Kodiakkarai), Tamil Nadu (Harrap & Redman 1987) in 1985 from Chennai  (Santharam 1985) and from Goa in 2007 (Birdquest: Goa 2007). More recently, it had been reported in 2016 from the Indian Institute of Science campus at Bengaluru (Sridhar & Bhat 2016).

Eyebrowed Thrush is a common winter visitor to the Indian Subcontinent from Bangladesh eastwards (Ali & Ripley 1983) and, as the abovementioned records indicate, a straggler to further south of the subcontinent.

Thanks to  Aadhithyan and Sathyan Meppayur for identifying the bird and to Praveen J. for promptly providing the reference material for preparing this note.

 

References:

  • Ali S. & Repley S. D. 1983. Handbook of the birds of India and Pakistan. Compact Edition, Oxford University Press, Delhi.
  • Baker, E. C. S. 1924. The fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma. Birds. 2nd ed. London: Taylor and Francis. Vol. II of 8 vols.
  • Birdquest- Goa 2007  http://www.birdquest- tours.com/pdfs/report/GOA%20REP%2007%20.pdf  (downloaded on 30 December 2018)
  • Chandrashekara, U.M.  and S. Sankar 1998. Ecology and management of sacred groves in Kerala, India.  Elsevier Journal for Forest Ecology and Management, Volume 112, Issues 1–2, 14 December 1998, Pages 165-177.
  • Harrap, S. C.;Redman, N. J. 1990. Some observations of scarce birds in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society. 86: (3) 460–461.
  • Santharam, V. 1985. New records – Ashy Minivet and Eyebrowed Thrush in Madras. Newsletter for Birdwatchers. 25: (5-6) 9–11
  • Sridhar, Aditi;Bhat, Shubha 2016. Eyebrowed Thrush Turdus obscurus in Bengaluru, India. Indian BIRDS. 11: (4) 100–101.