Pin-striped Tit-Babbler

The pin-striped tit-babbler, also known as the yellow-breasted babbler, is an Old World babbler of the family Timaliidae found in South and Southeast Asia: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. In India there are disjunct populations in southern India and others in the northern Eastern Ghats. It has a distinctive yellowish eyebrow and rufous crown, with a yellowish throat with brown streaks (Wikipedia, general species account).

The call is a loud, repeated chonk-chonk-chonk-chonk-chonk, somewhat reminiscent of a common tailorbird's, and the southern population was rediscovered from the Masinagudi area in Mudumalai in 2004. It forages in small flocks, creeping and clambering in low vegetation, and breeds in the pre-monsoon season, February to July, building a loose ball-shaped nest of grasses and leaves. SoIB 2023 rates it a Low conservation priority, a resident forest bird with a Moderate range of about 178,000 km² and insufficient data on trends (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).