Brown Rock Chat

The brown rock chat, or Indian chat, is a bird of the flycatcher family found mainly in northern and central India. It is about 17 cm long, larger than the similar-looking Indian robin, which the female resembles but without the reddish vent. It is uniformly rufous-brown, the wings and tail a slightly darker shade, with the brown underside grading into a dark grey-brown vent, and in flight it resembles a female blue rock thrush; in central India the local name Shama has been noted. It is often found in old buildings and rocky areas (Wikipedia, general species account).

It is nearly endemic to India, north of the Narmada, west to Gujarat (mainly Kutch but extending south) and east to Bengal. It feeds mainly on insects picked from the ground, sometimes flicking open its wings and tail, and has been known to feed late on insects attracted to artificial lighting. It has a wide repertoire of calls, nearly eight kinds having been noted, including territorial, begging, feeding, alarm, threat, contact, distress, roosting and emergence calls. SoIB 2023 treats it as endemic to the Indian subcontinent and rates it a Low conservation priority, with a Large range of about 972,000 km², a stable long-term trend and a rapidly increasing current trend of about 5% a year (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).