India GOBirds of Munnar
Kerala laughingthrush (Palani laughingthrush)
The Palghat Gap, a 30 km break in the Western Ghats, splits many species in two: one form north of it, a different one south. This bird and the Nilgiri laughingthrush are a textbook pair, separated by that gap. Around Munnar the laughingthrush is this one; the Nilgiri species does not occur here.
Montecincla fairbanki
Nilgiri flycatcher
Unlike most of the high-range endemics it tolerates gardens and plantation edges, so it is one of the easier Western Ghats specialities to meet without a long walk.
Eumyias albicaudatus
White-bellied sholakili (Nilgiri blue robin)
Sholakili means shola bird in Malayalam and Tamil, and the name is exact: the species cannot live outside these small pockets of montane evergreen forest tucked into grassland folds.
Sholicola albiventris
Nilgiri wood-pigeon
It depends on fruiting shola trees and moves seasonally between elevations following the fruit, so it turns up and disappears from the same patch over the year.
Columba elphinstonii
Nilgiri pipit
A range-wide survey in 2017–2018 found the contiguous grassland of Eravikulam and the adjoining Grass Hills to be the only remaining patch where the pipit is still abundant and invasive trees have not taken large areas.
Anthus nilghiriensis
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