BHUBANESWAR: Good news for bird watchers of the State. The Yellow-bellied Warbler, a small songbird occurring in the foothills of Himalayas, has been reported in Odisha for the first time.
Abroscopus superciliaris, as it is known, has been sighted in Satkosia Tiger Reserve. The Warbler is known to be a resident of Himalayas - from Central Nepal to Arunachal Pradesh, stretching up to South Assam Hills and north-eastern and southeastern Bangladesh. The little singing bird was spotted in Kantarsingha Game Tank near Labangi, about 13 km from Pampasar, main entrance to the tiger reserve, by conservation-naturalists duo Durgesh Kumar Singh and Aditya Chandra Panda. It has also been reported in the latest edition of South Asian ornithology journal Indian Birds.
The Yellow-bellied Warbler was found near the base of a bamboo clump where it was foraging in dried bamboo leaf litter. The bird’s distinct white supercilium, white throat with yellow underparts and yellowish-olive mantle ruled out any confusion with the Grey-hooded Warbler (or the Phylloscopus xanthoschistos) which is also unrecorded in this region.
This is the first confirmed record of this particular Warbler in the State. “There are no known breeding or wintering sightings of this songbird within a radius of 650 km around Satkosia Tiger Reserve towards its northern and northeastern sides,” Panda said.
The sighting suggests that the bird might be travelling to northern Eastern Ghats, possibly as far south as northern Andhra Pradesh, where similar habitat and terrain are present during winter. Originally, this Warbler species breeds in the foothills up to 2200 metres, travelling to adjacent plains during winters. It is also found in south-eastern Tibet, south-western China up to western Indonesia.
Experts believe that the bird might have been on its return migration from areas south of Satkosia. “The record suggests that there is a need to study potentially larger extent and abundance of migration of this species in the moist deciduous and semi-evergreen habitats of the Eastern Ghats and Chota Nagpur Plateau,” Panda said.