A rare bird from the Himalayas, Tickell’s Thrush that belongs to Thrush family Turdiadae, was recorded for the first time in the district here recently.
R. Venkatraman, a birder, spotted and photographed the bird while it was foraging among the leaf litter. He said that while waiting to photograph Emerald Dove, he saw a babbler-like bird foraging on the ground and initially overlooked it as a Puff-throated Babbler. On getting a closer look, the bird looked different.
“Before I could click a picture, it went into the darker thickets,” he said and added that after patiently waiting for one-and-a-half hours in the same place, the bird came out and he took the picture.
S.V. Ganeshwar of Salem Ornithological Foundation said that Tickell’s Thrush is named after Col. Samuel Richard Tickell, a British ornithologist, who worked in India and Burma. The birds migrate from Himalayas to peninsular India during winter season.
As per eBird database, there were only nine previous records of Tickell’s Thrush in Tamil Nadu and none from Salem. The sighting in Yercaud is the first for the district as well as the Eastern Ghats of Tamil Nadu, he added.
