Northern Scrub-Robin

Large, short-tailed antbird of floodplain forest understory. Both sexes largely gray with a bare blue skin patch around the eye and a prominent white spots on the shoulder. Females are particularly distinctive with extensive orange underparts. Forages singly or in pairs in dense undergrowth, like heliconias and streamside vegetation. Song is a chortling accelerating trill.

Slightly smaller than a domestic chicken, but longer bodied and reddish in color. Females have more barring on the upperparts than males. It is a bird of dry and moist forests as well as well-wooded villages. Males have a distinctive, rapidly repeated “k-r-r-r-kwek, kr-kr-kwek, kr-kr-kwek” call, often delivered in the mornings and evenings. When flushed males and females give a harsh, cackling “kuk-kuk-kuk-kukaak.” Forages in the undergrowth and is generally secretive, but often seen crossing roads or walking down paths in pairs or small groups. Birds from northern India are more buffish-gray while birds of southern India are darker.

Slightly smaller version of the familiar cartoon Greater Roadrunner, but usually the two species do not occur in the same places. Favors dry brushy woodland and overgrown weedy fields in tropical lowlands and foothills. Can be very elusive, but at other times runs out in the road or sits quietly sunning itself on a fence post or bush top in the early morning. Note that the center of the throat and breast are plain rich buffy, without the dense dark streaking of Greater Roadrunner.