Nilgiri thrush
| Nilgiri thrush | |
|---|---|
| Not evaluated (IUCN 3.1) | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Passeriformes |
| Family: | Turdidae |
| Genus: | Zoothera |
| Species: | Z. neilgherriensis |
| Binomial name | |
| Zoothera neilgherriensis (Blyth, 1847) | |
| Synonyms | |
|
Zoothera dauma neilgherriensis | |
The Nilgiri thrush (Zoothera neilgherriensis) is a member of the thrush family.
Distribution and habitat
The NILGIRI thrush is a shola bird found in southern West hilly shola patches.It is rarely found in roadways ,feeds on insects and thus an opportunistic insectivore during the rainy days noted to be found on roads of sholas. The nilgiri thrush is a bird which stays on a terrestrial level lower canopy of the moist shola ecosystem.Scaly body of this species gives it a protective side of camouflage in terrestrial understorey of the forest.Habitat extent is distributed till the hilly moist shola patches of the southern western ghats .It is a resident bird to Western ghats.
Description
The sexes are similar, 27–31 cm long, with black scaling on a paler white or yellowish background. The most striking identification feature in flight is the black band on the white underwings, a feature shared with Siberian thrush. The male has a song which is a loud, far-carrying mechanical whistle, with 5-10 second pauses between each one second long phrase twee...tuuu....tuuu....tuuu.
It was previously considered a subspecies of the scaly thrush.