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Bird · Sholicola albiventris
White-bellied sholakili (Nilgiri blue robin)
IUCN NT · Near threatened
A small slate-blue chat with a white belly that lives only in the dense undergrowth of high-altitude shola forest in the Western Ghats, and almost never comes into the open.
How to recognise it
A guided ear job: a rich, varied, unhurried song from deep inside a shola thicket, and if you are patient a bird that crosses one gap at ankle height.
Where to see it
Munnar
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.
Pampadum Shola National Park (Vattavada road) (in season) · Eravikulam National Park