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Brown-cheeked Fulvetta

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Alcippe poioicephala

Kaeng Krachan National Park, Thailand

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Continuing my series on the various babblers, warblers, parrotbills, white-eyes, fulvettas, laughingthrushes and their allies I have had the good fortune to observe and photograph across Asia Pacific. This blog is about the Brown-cheeked Fulvetta, an unapologetically drab and unmarked fulvetta, often seen in association with mixed-species foraging flocks. It inhabits hill & montane forest, where it forages actively in the forest and the forest edge.

To read about my other babblers, I have done a collection here: Old World Babblers.

The Old World Babblers are a family of mostly Old World passerine birds rather diverse in size and coloration, characterised by soft fluffy plumage. These are birds of tropical areas, with the greatest variety in SE Asia and the Indian subcontinent. The timaliids are one of two unrelated groups of birds known as babblers, the other being the Australasian babblers of the family Pomatostomidae (also known as pseudo-babblers). Morphological diversity is rather high; most species resemble warblers, jays or thrushes.

The Brown-cheeked Fulvetta (Alcippe poioicephala) (or brown-cheeked alcippe as the fulvettas proper are not closely related to this bird), is included in the Pellorneidae family. It was earlier also known as the Quaker Babbler.

In an earlier blog I have included the genus of passerines known as Pnoepyga endemic to southern and south eastern Asia. The Pnoepyga contains five species with its members known as cupwings or wren-babblers and they have long been placed in the babbler family Timaliidae. But a 2009 study of the DNA of the families Timaliidae and the Old World warblers (Sylviidae) found no support for the placement of the genus in either family, prompting the authors to erect a new monogeneric family, the Pnoepygidae.

These are all part of the superfamily Sylvioidea, one of at least three major clades within the Passerida along with the Muscicapoidea and Passeroidea. It contains about 1300 species including the Old World warblers, Old World babblers, swallows, larks and bulbuls. Members of the clade are found worldwide, with fewer species present in the Americas. Some of the families within the Sylvioidea have been greatly redefined. In particular, the Old World warbler family Sylviidae and Old World babbler family Timaliidae were used as waste-bin taxa and included many species which have turned out not to be closely related. Several new families have been created and some species have been moved from one family to another - to the extent that when I took some of these photos I had different names for them to what they are currently named in this article.

The Babbler group:

This list is an extract from the list of 25 families is based on the molecular phylogenetic study published by Silke Fregin and colleagues in 2012 and the revisions of the babbler group by Cai et al (2019) The family sequence and number of species is from the online list of world birds maintained by Frank Gill and David Donsker on behalf of the International Ornithological Committee (IOC).

Illustrated in this blog is one of the Pellorneidae I was fortunate to observe and photograph at the Kaeng Krachan National Park in Thailand. All these images are from an erstwhile poachers hide in very low light to get in close to the birds and all of them involved long periods of wait and heaps of patience. With some birds like the Pygmy Wren-Babbler I got lucky as the bird came in very close and actually went past me as it foraged and I was able to “fill the frame” from about a foot away. But to be honest, I prefer the photos with some ambience around the bird because it gives an idea of where and in some cases how the bird tends to forage and also allows the subject in the image to breathe.

Pellorneidae

The jungle babblers, Pellorneidae, are mostly Old World passerine birds belonging to the super family Sylvioidea. They are quite diverse in size and coloration, and usually characterised by soft, fluffy plumage and a tail on average the length of their body, or longer. These birds are found in tropical zones, with the greatest biodiversity in Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Morphological diversity is rather high; most species resemble warblers, jays or thrushes, making field identification difficult.

The family Pellorneidae was first introduced by the French-American ornithologist Jean Théodore Delacour in 1946. Pellorneidae used to be one of four subfamilies of Timaliidae (tree- and scimitar-babblers), but was then elevated to its own family rank in 2011 based on molecular markers.

Originally placed within Timaliidae as a subfamily, Pellorneidae was elevated into family status following a closer analysis of the superfamily Sylvioidea. Sylvioidea was initially considered too complex to differentiate using morphology due to multiple instances of convergent evolution, and it wasn't until molecular analysis was conducted that the superfamily was recognised to be non-monophyletic - hence Pellorneidae being recognised as a family. Pellorneidae is a sister to a clade containing the families Leiothrichidae and Alcippeidae.

Jungle babblers are small to medium-sized birds which are on average 14 cm long and weigh around 30g, but range from 10–26 cm, and 12-36g.

Divided between being terrestrial and arboreal, Pellorneidae have strong legs. They usually have generalised bills, similar to those of a thrush or warbler, with the exception of the long-billed wren-babbler (Rimator malacoptilus) & both species of scimitar babbler from the Jabouilleia genus which have long, curved bills. Most jungle babblers have predominantly brown plumage with little sexual dimorphism, but brightly coloured species of this family also exist. Many jungle babblers have distinctive 'eyebrows' & 'caps' which may help to differentiate them from similarly-sized and coloured species.

This group is not strongly migratory, and most species have short rounded wings, and weak flight. They live in lightly wooded, scrubland, or jungle environments, ranging from swamp to near-desert. They are primarily insectivorous, although many will also take berries, and the larger, omnivorous species will even eat small lizards and other vertebrates.

But first a little bit about Kaeng Krachan National Park.

Kaeng Krachan National Park

Kaeng Krachan National Park is the largest national park of Thailand on the border with Burma, contiguous with the Tanintharyi Nature Reserve. It is located in Phetchaburi & Prachuap Khiri Khan Provinces, about 60 km from Phetchaburi and 75 km from Hua Hin. Covering an area of 2,914 km² it is the largest national park in Thailand. The park is part of the Western Forex Complex that covers 18,730 km² across 19 protected sites between Myanmar and Thailand, bounded by the Tanintharyi Nature Reserve along Myanmar's border to the west. A dense rain forest on the eastern slope of the Tenasserim Mountain Range where the Pranburi & Phetchaburi Rivers originate. Both rivers originate from the Tanaosri Mountain Range. In the north, Phetchaburi River flows into Kaeng Krachan Dam and flows further east all the way out to the Gulf of Thailand. Pran Buri River flows south to Prachuap Khiri Khan Province, into Pran Buri Reservoir and out to the Gulf of Thailand.

The park was declared a reserve in 1964 and on 12 June 1981 it became the 28th national park of Thailand. Originally covering an area of 2,478 km2, it was enlarged in December 1984 to include the boundary area between Phetchaburi and Prachuap Khiri Khan Provinces, an additional 300,000 rai. The park has been included in the list of ASEAN Heritage Parks. Since 2011, Thailand has proposed that Unesco designate Kaeng Krachan National Park a world heritage site.

Mammal species such as leopards, clouded leopards, bears, stump-tailed macaques, sambar deer, barking deer, elephants, dholes, golden jackals, gaurs, serows, yellow-throated martens, various civet species, crab-eating mongooses and many others can be found in the park.

Now onto the Fulvetta. We were in the erstwhile poacher’s hide deep inside Kaeng Krachan National Park waiting when the Brown-cheeked Fulvetta made its appearance. It first spent some time perched on a branch above the waterhole inspecting the surroundings and then quickly came down for a dip or two. This was the only time the bird came to the waterhole and gave us an opportunity to photograph it in extremely low light conditions.

Brown-cheeked Fulvetta

The Brown-cheeked Fulvetta (Alcippe poioicephala) (or brown-cheeked alcippe as the fulvettas proper are not closely related to this bird), is included in the family Alcippeidae. It was earlier also known as the quaker babbler. It is an unapologetically drab & unmarked fulvetta, often seen in association with mixed-species foraging flocks. The bird is brown with a gray wash to the head, the Southeast Asian birds have a thin black brow line that the Indian birds lack. It also lacks the bright white eyering and more prominent brow stripe of the Nepal & Yunnan Fulvettas. It typically inhabits hill and montane forest, where it forages actively in the forest and the forest edge. Their Song consists of a brief or mid-length phrase of pleasant-sounding whistles, usually with a short ascending note toward the end while calls include loud sputtery chattering and rattling. This species, like most babblers, is not migratory, and has short rounded wings and a weak flight.

This species is one of those retained in the genus Alcippe after the true fulvettas and some others were removed; the group had turned out to contain quite unrelated birds. Its closest relatives are probably the brown fulvetta and the black-browed fulvetta, which was only recently recognized as a distinct species again. The Javan fulvetta and the Nepal fulvetta might also belong to this group.

The brown-cheeked fulvetta is a resident breeding bird in Bangladesh, India and Southeast Asia.

The brown-cheeked fulvetta measures 15 cm including its longish tail. It is brown above and buff, with no patterning on the body or wings. The crown is grey, and the cheeks are dark. This babbler builds its nest in trees, concealed in dense masses of foliage. The normal clutch is two or three eggs. They have short, dark bills & their food is mainly insects and nectar. They can be difficult to observe in the dense vegetation they prefer, but these are vocal birds, and their characteristic calls are often the best indication that they are present.

Now for the photos of this unapologetically drab and unmarked fulvetta hill usually seen in the undergrowth of moist forests and scrub jungles.

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This is but a glimpse into the beautiful world of the babblers and the tremendous variety in the species & that they are still being discovered. Do subscribe if you liked what you saw and if you would like to continue to read these insights into the beautiful birds and animals inhabiting our planet.

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