Journal of Threatened Taxa | www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 September 2018 | 10(10): 12422–12424

First record of Yellow-Rumped Flycatcher Ficedula zanthopygia (Hay, 1845) (Aves: Passeriformes: Muscicapidae) in eastern India

Manaranjan Das ¹ & Subrat Debata ²

¹ Hill View Resort, Panchalingeswar, Balasore, Odisha 756040, India

² Aranya Foundation, Plot No-625/12, Mars Villa, Panchasakha Nagar, Dumduma, Bhubaneswar, Odisha 751019, India

¹ manaranjankuldiha@gmail.com, ² subrat.debata007@gmail.com (corresponding author)

doi: https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.4222.10.10.12422-12424 | ZooBank: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:24349D7F-0DAE-44AB-B791-2E04DAB278BC

Editor: V. Santharam, Institute of Bird Studies & Natural History, Chittoor, India. Date of publication: 26 September 2018 (online & print)

Manuscript details: Ms # 4222 | Received 26 April 2018 | Final received 12 June 2018 | Finally accepted 18 August 2018

Citation: Das, M. & S. Debata (2018). First record of Yellow-rumped Flycatcher Ficedula zanthopygia (Hay, 1845) (Aves: Passeriformes: Muscicapidae) in eastern India. Journal of Threatened Taxa 10(10): 12422–12424; https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.4222.10.10.12422-12424

Copyright: © Das & Debata 2018. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. JoTT allows unrestricted use of this article in any medium, reproduction and distribution by providing adequate credit to the authors and the source of publication.

Funding: None.

Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.

Acknowledgements: We are thankful to the anonymous reviewers for the valuable comments in improvising the manuscript. Thanks to Himanshu Shekhar Palei for preparing the study area map.

The Yellow-rumped or Korean Flycatcher Ficedula zanthopygia (Hay, 1845) is a small to medium-sized flycatcher native to China, Indonesia, Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Taiwan, Thailand and Viet Nam (BirdLife International 2016; Anonymous 2018; Fig. 1). With its large distribution range this species has been categorized as ‘Least Concern’ in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (BirdLife International 2016). These birds breed along the low valleys of eastern North Korea, South Korea, and China in May–June (Liu & Wang 1981; Wang et al. 2007), and then the population moves south to Malaysia and Sumatra for wintering (Clement & de Juana 2018). Very few sightings of this species have been recorded in India and Sri Lanka (Grimmett et al. 2011; Grewal et al. 2016). In India, sightings are from five localities (Fig. 1). On 30 April 1989, Haribal (1991) first sighted a male individual of this species along a streambed in Melghat Wildlife Sanctuary in central India (Location 1 in Fig. 1). On 30 January 1996, Holt (2003) sighted a female along the Mangala Devi trail in Periyar National Park, Kerala (Location 2 in Fig. 1). On 15 July 2006, Baskaran (2006) sighted a male near Bandipur National Park, Karnataka (Location 3 in Fig. 1). Subsequently, on 25 December 2006, Jain (2006) sighted this bird in Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary, Kerala (Location 4 in Fig. 1). Very recently, on 15 February 2016, Athri (2016) sighted this bird in Thattekkad-Salim Ali Bird Sanctuary, Kerala (Location 5 in Fig. 1). Based on these few sightings, Grimmett et al. (2011) and Grewal et al. (2016) treated this species as ‘vagrant’ in India. Here we present the first sighting report of Yellow-rumped Flycatcher from eastern India.

On 20 April 2018, at about 15:40 hours, the first author sighted a single male individual of the species (Image 1) perching on a Macaranga peltata tree (locally known as Gondaguria) near Gadasimulia area of Kuldiha Wildlife Sanctuary, Odisha, eastern India (21.427⁰N & 86.596⁰E; elevation 139m) (Location 6 in Fig. 1). The bird stayed there without any activity for about two minutes and then flew away. The sighting location is situated along a riparian zone adjoining to Gadasimulia Hill stream. Vegetation in the area falls under the tropical mixed deciduous type (Champion & Seth 1968).

The species is distinguished from other congeners occurring in India by having black upperparts, yellow underparts, long white wing patch, pronounced white supercilium and yellow rump (Image 1). Based on the above characters, the species is confirmed as Yellow-rumped Flycatcher Ficedula zanthopygia following the identification characters described by Grimmett et al. (2011) and Grewal et al. (2016).

During the last two decades, there have been increasing efforts to document birds from different parts of India. Some of the new additions to Indian avifauna are Yunnan Nuthatch Sitta yunnanensis Ogilvie-Grant, 1900 (Bonpo & Kuriakose 2014), Black-browed Tit Aegithalos bonvaloti (Oustalet, 1891) (Sangha et al. 2013), Elliot’s Laughingthrush Trochalopteron elliotii (Verreaux, 1870), Black-headed Greenfinch Chloris ambigua (Oustalet, 1896) (Dalvi 2013), Tristram’s Bunting Emberiza tristrami Swinhoe, 1870 (Naniwadekar et al. 2013) and White-cheeked Starling Spodiopsar cineraceus (Temminck, 1835) (Hatibaruah et al. 2017). Sighting of Yellow-rumped Flycatcher from Kuldiha Wildlife Sanctuary in Odisha, eastern India along with five earlier reports from the central and southern India (Haribal 1991; Holt 2003; Baskran 2006; Jain 2006; Athri 2016) indicate that the species may regularly winter in the Indian subcontinent; further surveys are required to confirm this.

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