Dark-fronted Babbler

The dark-fronted babbler is a small babbler about 13cm long, including its square-tipped tail. It is chestnut-brown above and white below, with a striking pale yellow eye. The two Western Ghats subspecies have a black hood, duller sooty in the southern form, while in the two Sri Lankan races the black is reduced to a dark bandit mask; the Sri Lankan birds also differ in how olive or rufous they are above (Wikipedia, general species account).

It lives in the undergrowth of forests and along forest edges, where parties forage constantly, clambering up the vegetation and dropping from the tops of bushes into cover when disturbed. It feeds mainly on insects and often joins mixed-species flocks. Like other babblers it has a weak flight and is resident. It can be hard to see in dense vegetation, but it is noisy, and its rattling, churring alarm calls are usually the best sign that it is present. SoIB 2023 treats it as endemic to the Western Ghats and Sri Lanka, estimates a long-term decline of about 66%, and rates it a Moderate conservation priority (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).