Chestnut-crowned Laughingthrush

Garrulax erythrocephalus

Species Index

3 December 2009

Possible regional races (polytypic)

Historical
82. Trochalopterum erythrocephalum. The Red-headed Laughing-Thrush. Cinclosoma erythrocephalum, Vigors, P.Z.S. 1831, p. 171; Gould, Cent. pl. 17.
Garrulax erythrocephalus ( Vig.) Blyth, Cat. p. 97.
Pterocyclus erythrocephalus ( Vig.) Horsf. & M. Cat. i, p. 206.
Trochalopteron erythrocephalum ( Vig.), Jerd. B.I. ii, p. 43; Stoliczka, J.A.S.B. xxxvii, pt. ii, p. 37; Hume, N.&E. p. 258; id. Cat. no. 415; Scully, S.F. viii, p. 290; Sharpe, Cat. B. M. vii, p. 360; Oates in Hume's N.&E. 2nd ed. i, p. 55.

Coloration: Forehead, crown, and nape chestnut; ear-coverts chestnut, each feather blackish near the tip and edged with white; lores, chin, and upper throat black with a chocolate tinge; cheeks mingled chestnut and black; mantle and sides of neck olive-brown, each feather with a semicircular black mark near the end; lower back plain olive-brown; rump and upper tail-coverts slaty grey; tail ashy, suffused with golden yellow on the outer webs; wingcoverts olive-brown, the greater series broadly tipped with deep ferruginous; primary-coverts and winglet yellow on the outer webs, ashy on the inner; outer webs of the primaries and secondaries bright golden yellow; tertiaries and tips of the secondaries ashy blue; the base of the outer webs of the secondaries golden red; lower plumage pale fulvous, washed with olivaceous on the sides of the body and under tail-coverts, each feather of the throat and breast with a narrow crescentic black bar near the end and tipped with fulvous white.

The young are at first without the black marks on the throat, breast, and back, but they soon acquire them.

Legs and feet pale brown; iris pale yellowish brown; bill black (Hume); iris greyish brown (Scully).

Length nearly 11; tail 4.8; wing 4.2; tarsus 1.5; bill from gape 1.1.

Habits: Scully remarks that this species moves about very rapidly and noiselessly amongst bushes, and its note is subdued and not unmusical. It breeds from May to July, constructing a nest of dead leaves bound together with ferns and grass in a low tree or bush, and laying from two to four eggs, which are blue marked with brownish red and measure 1.2 by 0.82.