Magpie Starling

Large chunky babbler the size of a thrush. Dark brown above with bright white throat, coffee-colored cheeks, and black-and-white-scaled underparts. Gives a long airy whistle followed by a nasal buzzy note: “whee-chzzzz”. Forages near or on the ground in foothill and montane forests. Extremely shy and retiring, seldom seen well.

A dapper and long-tailed inhabitant of Java’s foothill and montane forests. Warm brown overall, with a silvery nape, dark face, and jet-black wings marked with a small white patch. Extremely long, round-tipped tail is silver-gray above with a dark tip, and predominantly dark below with a pale band near the tip. Forages at all levels of the forest, often hopping amongst leaf clusters and moving between trees in fast, fluttering flight. Calls include coarse grating squawks, a fluid “tlee’lee”, and a series of short hoarse “whurr!” notes.

Striking tanager of open woodland, consisting of two relatively distinctive subspecies. Distinguished from other warbling-finches in range by its black breast band. Nominate torquatus is a resident of the southern Bolivian Andes, especially open scrub and cactus forest of the dry valleys. Migratory pectoralis shows a thicker breast band and darker undertail coverts, and breeds in the Pampas, Monte, and northern Chaco dry forests in north central Argentina, dispersing north to lowlands of W Paraguay and SE Bolivia.