Sandy Scops-Owl

Small and slim with a strong rusty-brown wing panel, resembles a small and beautified Greater Whitethroat. The male has a gray hood, white puffy throat, black in front of the eye, conspicuous white eyering, and white mustache. Females best told from Greater Whitethroat by short wings and dark centers to the tertials. Breeds in low bushes and scrub including salt flats; winters in similar habitats as well as tamarisk thickets and oases. Shy, but given its choice of habitat, often has nowhere to really hide. Normally sings from the tops of bushes or in flight, giving tuneful whistles with harsher, rattled notes.

Breathtakingly majestic inhabitant of high and remote mountain ranges, where they build large nests on cliff ledges or in caves. Even as a distant speck, this is an unmistakable raptor, with an almost albatross-like wing shape and span, coupled with a long diamond-shaped tail. Adults are orange-rust below with a dark underwing, and slate gray above. The young are gray with a dark head. Cruises along ridgetops on flat wings, sometimes arched downwards.

This creamy, partridge-like beauty is the only tragopan in its range and the world’s only pale-bellied tragopan. A thickset bird, usually encountered foraging in pairs in mid-altitude hill forest. Male is pale below and intricately spotted above, with pale polka dots on a black-and-chestnut background; has a similarly black-and-chestnut head with bright orange facial skin. Female is dark gray-brown with a slightly paler face and belly; wings and belly streaked paler. During courtship, male drums wings loudly and gives a bizarre, scarily infant-like waaah! followed by loud grunting notes.