Jungle babbler - Turdoides striata

Common Name :	Jungle babbler.
Binomial Name :	Turdoides striata
Synonym :	Turdoides striatus, Malacocercus terricolor
Family :	Leiothrichidae
Bengali Name :	Chhatare pakhi (ছাতারে পাখি), Shat bhai pakhi (সাত ভাই পাখি).
Photo Taken :	Bangladesh, India

Jungle babbler is a native bird from Bangladesh along with South Asia and few other countries from the world. In our language we call it Chhatare pakhi (ছাতারে পাখি). The binomial name of the bird is Turdoides striata with synonyms Turdoides striatus, Malacocercus terricolor, etc. It belongs to the family Leiothrichidae. I don't know any other English name of this bird.

These three Jungle babbler (Turdoides striata) are having a great time together.

It has several other Bengali names, one such name is Shat bhai chhatare (সাত ভাই ছাতারে) means seven brothers. Because it is a gregarious bird and mostly uses to forage with a group of 6-7. That's why it got such Bengali name. This is a resident breeder bird and often seen around Bangladesh, and not yet threatened.

Jungle babbler (Turdoides striata) is a gregarious bird and lives mostly at the lover part of the forest (or you can say mostly near around ground level). They mostly forage in a group of 6-7, and often seen foraging with other bird species too. They often seen scooping around the leafs of moist deciduous forest or bamboo trees.

It is a normal sized bird (25cm) having a dull or pale brown color. Under side of the bird is lighter in color and the upper side (wigs and back) is dark in color. The back side is lightly streaked (probably the front side too). The beak is pale yellow, orange in color. Color of the eye is faded with black pupil and the eyes are having a pale yellow circle. Both male and female birds are identical in look.

The light colored streaks are visible on the back of the bird.

Jungle babbler (Turdoides striata) has a long tail compare to the bird's body. The wings are short and has a weak flight for this reason. Probably that's why this bird lives mostly near to the ground level. They produce a strange sound (not bird's call) when the forage on the dry leafs, it always gives me a feeling like some small animals are nearby, but actually the babblers doing that.

This gregarious bird maintains the territory for the group. They sometime defend their territory against the other groups. Jungle babbler (Turdoides striata) mainly feed on a wide range of small insects like ants, wasps, grasshoppers, etc but also takes grains as meal.

They make their nests on middle (in terms of height) of the tree and often found hidden inside the dense leafs of the tree. They lay beautiful greenish blue eggs. Sometimes they are parasitized by the birds like cuckoo (i.e. Common hawak cuckoo).

As this bird is not attractive like the other pet birds, hence it doesn't have any direct threat from the humans. But due to the increase of population and expansion this bird is loosing their space.

Photos of Jungle babbler (Turdoides striata) were taken as listed below:
1) October 2014: Mirpur Botanical Garden, Bangladesh.
2) September 2015: Kolkata Botanical Garden, India.


This article has written by Lonely Traveler,
for the blog http://icwow.blogspot.com/