India GOBirds of ooty
Nilgiri laughingthrush (Nilgiri chilappan)
At Doddabetta the birds are used to people and forage close to the busy areas, which makes this one of the most approachable Western Ghats endemics anywhere. It lives inside Ooty, Coonoor and Kotagiri town limits, in gardens and orchards.
Montecincla cachinnans
Nilgiri flycatcher
It tolerates gardens and plantation edges, which is why the Botanical Garden and Sim's Park, both planted landscapes, reliably hold a bird found nowhere outside the Western Ghats.
Eumyias albicaudatus
Black-and-orange flycatcher
It cannot cross open ground between shola patches, so every fragment of montane forest that is cleared isolates another population.
Ficedula nigrorufa
Nilgiri wood-pigeon
It follows fruiting shola trees up and down the hills through the year, so it appears in a patch for a few weeks and then is gone.
Columba elphinstonii
Nilgiri pipit
Its total suitable habitat is estimated at no more than about 436 square kilometres, and invasive Scotch broom and wattle are taking over the grassland it needs. This is the species that makes the Wenlock Downs grassland worth protecting as grassland, not planting up.
Anthus nilghiriensis
Emerald dove
Tamil Nadu adopted it as the state bird, and it is a genuinely forest-dependent species: a reasonable emblem for a state whose hill forests are its water towers.
Chalcophaps indica
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