The Rufous-breasted, Black-chinned or Nilgiri Laughingthrush, Trochalopteron cachinnans, is a species of Laughingthrush

Laughingthrush

The Laughingthrushes are the genus Garrulax of the large Old World babbler family of passerine birds. They occur in tropical Asia, with the greatest number of species occurring in the Himalaya and southern China....

 endemic to Peninsular India.

Taxonomy

Recent treatments move this from the genus Garrulax to the older genus Trochalopteron and treat the former taxa T. jerdoni jerdoni (Banasore Laughingthrush) and T. cachinnans cachinnans as two races of a single species, which is given the new common name of Black-chinned Laughingthrush. The race jerdoni is restricted to the Brahmagiri areas of Coorg and Wayanad, while the nominate race cachinnans is found in the Nilgiri hills. The race jerdoni has a grey breast with faint streaks. The two races are found north of the Palghat gap

Palakkad Gap

Palakkad Gap is a 30-40 kilometers wide low mountain pass in the Western Ghats, near Palakkad town in the South Indian State of Kerala. It has an elevation of . The hills rise to 1100m to the North of the gap, and 2000m to the South. The average height of the gap is 144m.The gap is the lowest...

.

Interestingly Jerdon had noted that his T. jerdoni had a close affinity with the Nilgiri race well before the 2005 work by P C Rasmussen.

Food

This species forages at the forest edge on invertebrates, nectar, flowers and fruits, mostly within 3 m of the ground, and mostly in the early morning and late afternoon. Peruvian cherry Physalis peruviana, Rubus and Hill Guava Rhodomyrtus tomentosa are favourite fruits.

Historic notes

The eggs vary in length from 0.92 to 1.08, and in breadth from 0.74 to 0.8, but the average of twenty eggs measured was 1.0 by 0.76.

External links

• Red data book species information