Bulbuls: Play on Merry Minstrels

For years now, my early morning alarm has been a pair of red-whiskered bulbuls (Pycnonotus jocusus) that roost in the bougainvillaea outside my bedroom window. They greet the morning with mellifluous calls — much more pleasant than a brain-piercing electronic alarm. They awake at dawn, about 5 am in summer and 7 am in winter — such a sensible way to start the day. Approximately 20 cm long, they are slim, straight-backed passerines (perching birds). They are coffee-brown with white faces, a black cheek strap, and a tuft of scarlet whiskers on their cheeks. Their heads are black, topped off with a jaunty curving crest, which makes them look somewhat like comic palace guardsmen (no wonder they’re known as “sipahi” bulbuls in Hindi). They sport a cheerful disposition and produce an array of melodious calls, some of which have been described as “petigrew!” or “pleased to meet you”, which for me has always been a mutual feeling! In the afternoon, a group of these bulbuls (accompanied by their cousins, red-vented bulbuls, Pycnonotus cafer), may bustle around musically on the bottlebrush tree outside after a refreshing bath in just watered flowerbeds, preening themselves as if in preparation for an evening out on the town.

Worldwide (mainly in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Southeast Asia), the bulbul clan comprises 160 species, of which around 22-23 are found in India. The most familiar — and quite at home in big cities — are probably red-whiskered, red-vented, white-eared (in drier regions), and white-cheeked (a hill station lover) bulbuls. The red-vented bulbul (also around 20 cm) is stockier than the red-whiskered bulbul, and has scaly brown plumage, black-head, white rump, scarlet vent, and a “crest” that looks as if it has been cropped. It is more pugnacious and truculent than its graceful and elegant cousin. Time and again, I have seen it bully the latter away from a perch — sometimes apparently teasing it just for the heck of it.

The white-eared bulbul (Pycnonotus leucogenys leocotis) is similar in build to the red-vented bulbul with brown-beige plumage, white cheeks, with a sunshine-yellow bottom and disposition to match! It prefers drier regions of the country, and one summer, we had a pair nesting in the garden hedge. Its cousin, the white-cheeked bulbul (Pycnonotus leocogenys leucogenys), a familiar resident of Himalayan hill stations, is quite similar but sports a crest that hangs over its forehead rather like a court jester’s cap. White-cheeked bulbuls are canny birds, and at Kasauli I’d seen one entering the hotel verandah every morning to clear out all the hungover moths passed out on walls after partying under the verandah lights the previous night.

An arboreal resident of the Himalayas is the raucous Himalayan black bulbul (Hypsipetes madagascariensis). At 23 cm, it is slate-black from head to toe with a bright scarlet bill, legs, and feet. These guys move about the treetops in rowdy rabbles, occasionally sallying after flying insects and visiting the higher regions of the mountains only in summer.

The white-browed bulbul (Pycnonotus luteolus), a drab olive-brown bulbul (20 cm) with a distinctive white eyebrow (supercilium) and yellow vent, is a resident of peninsular India. It makes up for its lack of glamour with its call — which has been compared to the tinkling of a stream running over a bed of pebbles.

Other species have a more restricted range: the yellow-browed bulbul (Acritillas indica), a sulphur-yellow crestless bulbul is found in the Eastern Ghats; the ashy bulbul (Hemixos flavala) is a handsome grey, black, white, and yellow bird; mountain (Ixos mcclellandii) and flavescent (Pycnonotus flavescens) bulbuls are found only in some parts of Northeast India and the Himalayas. Three species, the grey-headed bulbul (Pycnonotus pricephalus), the Andaman bulbul (Brachypodius fuscoflavescens) and the Nicobar bulbul (Ixos nicobariensis) are considered “Near Threatened” species on the IUCN’s Red List, with decreasing populations. The cachar or Indian olive bulbul (Iole cacharensis) has been deemed of “high conservation concern” by the State of India’s Birds 2020 report.

By and large, bulbuls are monogamous and nest during the monsoon, when caterpillars and insects thrive. Their nests are usually neat cup-like structures made of thin twigs, fibres and thin roots tied with spider silk, placed on trees (3-5 m high), bushes and hedgerows, or even under the eaves of houses. Both sexes share household duties, and incubation lasts up to around 14 days when 3-4 eggs are hatched. Each season a pair will raise more than one brood. The babies fledge around a fortnight later. When the brood is threatened (by coucals, crows, cats, and garden lizards, all of which take a heavy toll), the red-whiskered bulbul (the female, presumably) puts on an elaborate distraction display, calling piteously, pretending to be grievously injured, in an attempt to lure the predator away from the babies, while her partner, flutters around her in a show of great concern. Sometimes, they overdo it. Once a pair of red-vented bulbuls made such a song and dance when I inadvertently approached a nest deep in a garden that I learnt immediately that there were chicks nearby. Now, when I spot either of the species diving furtively in and out of garden hedges, I keep my distance; I may not have an appetite for bulbul chicks, but ever-watching monkeys, cats, and crows certainly do.

Bulbuls relish berries (the notorious lantana is a favourite), drupes (stone fruit) and other fruit, insects, and nectar, though humans don’t like it when they help themselves in our orchards.

Red-whiskered and red-vented bulbuls have unfortunately become popular in the pet trade, and while they make enchanting pets, that is no reason to keep them caged. They have been taken abroad too — all the way to Hawaii — and in some places, they are doing better than local species (which is a cause for resentment).

Apart from the natural areas they inhabit — scrub jungles, hill and mountain forests, and cultivated areas all over the sub-continent — our city parks and gardens would be duller places without these charismatic melodious minstrels, who are always so “pleased to meet you”.

Photo source: Himalayan bulbul, Andaman bulbul