JOURNAL OF WILDLIFE RESEARCH Journal homepage: www.jakraya.com/journal/jwr STUDY REPORT Sighting Record of White-Browed Bushchat ( Saxicola macrorhynchus ) from Amravati District, Maharashtra, India Kiran More 1, Ninad Abhang 1, Jayant Wadatkar 1 and Rutuja Kukade 1* 1* Wildlife and Environment Conservation Society, (WECS) Amravati, 42, Green Park Colony, Near Asiad Colony, Shegaon Road, Amravati - 444604. Abstract Sawanga Lake is situated at 20°49' 0" N, 77°53' 0" E, and 23 km *Corresponding Author: east to Amravati city, Maharashtra. This lake is in Pohara Malkhed Reserve Rutuja Kukade rd Email: [email protected] Forest. On 3 March 2016 during regular bird watching we saw a White Browed Bush Chat at Sawanga Lake. Sighting of this bird and it's reasons Received: 12/12/2017 are discussed in this note. Accepted: 09/01/2018 Keywords: White browed Bushchat, Sighting record, Amravati, Maharashtra. Sawanga Lake is situated at 20°49' 0" N, 77°53' breeding male has broad buffish fringing above and 0" E, and 23 km east to Amravati city. This lake is in buffish-fringed remiges with less white. Female Pohara Malkhed Reserve Forest. On 3 rd March 2016 resembles with non-breeding male but female lacks during regular bird watching we saw a Bush Chat like dark mask and white color on tail are wings duller. bird at Sawanga Lake. First impression about the bird Juvenile is darker brown above than female, with buff was a Common Stonechat. After 5 minutes of streaks and spots and whitish below, brown-mottled observation, we slowly approached the bird without throat and breast. disturbing it for a better observation. It was looking like Common Stonechat but its bill was dark, thin and comparatively longer. It had long white brow, whitish under part and white primary covert. Fortunately we could manage to take some photographs. After comparing photographs with the field guides it was identified as White-browed Bushchat. More precisely that was a female White-browed Bushchat. It is the first sighting of this species for Amravati district. White-browed Bushchat (Saxicola macrorhynchus ) was earlier known as ‘Stoliczka’s whinchat’ is semi-endemic to the northwest parts of the Indian subcontinent. Bird life international listed it as Fig 1: White Browed Bushchat vulnerable. It has a small, declining population as a result of agricultural intensification and encroachment, White-browed Bushchat (Saxicola which qualifies it as vulnerable. It measures about macrorhynchus) is resident mainly in Rajasthan 17 cm. Males has white supercilium white primary (Grimmette, 2011) included Punjab, Haryana, Uttar covert and much white on tail upper and ear covert Pradesh, and Gujarat, adjacent parts of Punjab and appear blackish in adult and streaked in juvenile Sind, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Its individual sighting (Grimmette, 2007). Female White-browed Bushchat records are available for North-West India. It was can be confused with Female common stonechat formerly locally distributed and it was common or (Saxicola torquata ) but White-browed Bushchat has extremely abundant, but now it appears to have longer bill and tail, prominent supercilium, and broad declined. Recent records are from parts of the Thar buffish edges tips to tail feathers (Grimmette, 2007). Desert in Rajasthan and neighboring Gujarat (Rahmani, Breeding males are dark above with blackish mask and 1996), in many areas of the Little Rann of Kutch wings, broad white supercilium and band along inner (Nikhil Devasar, 2009; Rahmani, 1996), as well as wing-coverts and has whitish primary coverts. Non- numerous records from the Don grasslands in Kutch (Harvey, 2006), Hissar District, Haryana (Harvey, Journal of Wildlife Research | January-March, 2018 | Volume 06 | Issue 01 | Pages 01-02 © 2018 Jakraya More et al…Sighting Record of White-Browed Bushchat (Saxicola macrorhynchus) from Amravati District, Maharashtra, India 2002; Sharma and Sangwan, 2005) and two records and a team of birdwatchers on December 2007 in an from Maharashtra (Deshmukh, 2006; Rao, 2007). In open, scrub wasteland near Varvand, Pune district on 1993-1994, four intensive surveys located 86 birds in the Pune-Solapur highway. No other records of 18 localities, including 25 over a 45 km stretch on one sighting are available for this species in Maharashtra day, suggesting that it remains common at certain except these two. That is why this sighting record is localities (Rahmani, 1996). It has apparently strayed as important to ascertain present distribution of this bird. far east as the Bharatpur area of Rajasthan and as far This sighting could be a vagrant record because after south as Goa and Pune, with two simultaneous this sighting we never saw this bird again. As this historical records are from southern Afghanistan. species is categorized as vulnerable due to declining Deshmukh (2006) reported a male in non- population this species need special attention. Sighting breeding plumage 4 km east to Akola city in northern records of such small species living in scrub and Maharashtra on 17 th November 2002, between crop wasteland are very important because they often are field areas. Another sighting record is by Rao (2007) neglected. References Ali S (2002). The Book of Indian Birds, (13 th Edition). The Cornell Lab of Ornithology: All About Birds - Bank Bombay Natural History Society/Oxford University swallow (April, 2011) Press, Mumbai. http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Bank_Swallow/id. Bird Life International (March, 2011). IUCN (2012). IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (ver. http://www.birdlife.org/datazone/speciesfactsheet.php?i 2012.1). Available at: http://www.iucnredlist.org. d=7105. (Accessed: 19 June 2012). Bird Life International (2001). Threatened birds of Asia: the Rahmani AR (1996). Status and distribution of Stoliczka's Bird Life International Red Data Book . Bird Life Bushchat Saxicola macrorhyncha in India. Forktail, 12: International, Cambridge, U.K. 61-78. Deshmukh AJ (2006). First record of Stoliczka's bush chat Rahmani AR (1997). The Enigmatic White browed Bushchat. (Saxicola macrorhyncha) from Maharashtra. Journal of Hornbill , 29-32. the Bombay Natural History Society, 103(1): 102. Rahmani AR (2012). 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Journal of Wildlife Research | January-March, 2018 | Volume 06 | Issue 01 | Pages 01-02 © 2018 Jakraya 2 .