White-eared bulbul | Pycnonotus leucotis

Voice

More chattering than singing: a short, slightly nasal and quickly repeated witchee-yoo or kwitcher-weet, in which the third or fourth note jumps conspicuously high. There is also a run of short, tinny contact notes between members of a party. The species mimics other birds and is locally known for it. Heard most in the early morning and the last hour before dark, all year.

Identification

A small, compact bulbul with a short neck and a medium-length tail. The head is deep glossy black, from the base of the bill over crown, cheeks and throat to a sharp border on the upper breast. Set into it like a lamp is the large, oval, pure white ear patch — the mark everything rests on. Upperparts are plain grey-brown, underparts pale buff-grey, and under the tail a bright yellow patch flares as the bird flies off. The tail is dark brown to black with white tips to the outer feathers. The bill is short and black, the eye dark with a narrow bare grey ring. Sexes alike. Juveniles have a brown rather than black head, a duller ear patch and much paler yellow beneath the tail. There is no crest; at most the crown feathers are briefly raised.

Confusion species

In the overlap zone in south-western Iran and southern Iraq, White-spectacled Bulbul is the only real pitfall: it is larger and longer-tailed, has a dark brown rather than black head, lacks the white ear patch altogether and instead shows a thin white ring around the eye. Both species have yellow undertail coverts, so that mark decides nothing — look at the cheek. Further east, in Pakistan and northern India, Himalayan Bulbul takes over, with a pointed brown crest and an off-white rather than snow-white cheek patch. Red-whiskered Bulbul always shows a tall black crest, a red cheek spot and red undertail coverts.

Habitat

Shrubs, gardens and stands of trees in otherwise dry country: town gardens and parks, date palm groves, citrus and pomegranate plantations, tamarisk and oleander scrub along canals and rivers, field edges and the reed fringes of the Mesopotamian marshes. Also semi-desert where there is water and bush, and mangrove along the Gulf coast. Food is fruit, blossom, nectar and insects, taken from perches the birds like to keep high and open. The nest is a cup of twigs and plant fibre in a shrub or date palm one to three metres up, sometimes in a shed or under a canopy.

Range and movements

The core is the Euphrates and Tigris basin — southern and central Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain — plus the Iranian Gulf coast and south-western Iran; from there the range runs on eastwards through southern Afghanistan and Pakistan to north-western India, so a good part of it lies outside the map area. Kuwait was only colonised after the mid-1950s and the species is now one of its commonest garden birds. In Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the Emirates and Oman the populations go back to escaped birds; records in Israel and Jordan probably concern escaped cage birds as well.

• Resident
• Winter
• Passage
• Migration direction
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

Where and when to look

Any city park or hotel plot in Kuwait City, Basra or Bandar Abbas will produce the species within a quarter of an hour; watch for parties of five to thirty birds moving noisily from bush to bush. For a good photograph it pays to wait at a drip line or a garden fountain: bulbuls come there to drink and bathe in the midday heat, and then the white ear patch and the yellow vent appear in one frame.

Conservation status

Not globally threatened (IUCN: Least Concern) and clearly on the increase around the Gulf, helped by planting, irrigation and urban greenery. At the same time the species is trapped in numbers for the cage-bird trade in Iraq and Kuwait, and that trapping, together with the loss of gardens and scrub, depresses local numbers. In the Mesopotamian marshes it depends, like everything there, on water levels and on the reed fringes that returned after re-flooding.