Wildlife · Birds · Long read · 16 min read

Songs of the Sky Islands: The Birds of Munnar and the Western Ghats

A whistling thrush that sings like a schoolboy, a pipit that lives only on a few mountaintops, laughingthrushes that became new species on separate hills, and hornbills that plant the forest. The birds of Munnar and the southern Western Ghats, and the endemic and threatened species that make them unique.

By GK Global, Adimali, Munnar · Trails & Tales by GK

Walk into a shola forest above Munnar just after dawn, while the mist is still in the trees, and the first thing you notice is the sound. A clear, rambling whistle rises and falls from a stream bed, sounding exactly like a boy whistling a tune he cannot quite remember. Small birds call from the undergrowth. A flock of tiny, olive-green birds with white eye-rings passes through the canopy, and somewhere out on the grassland, a small brown bird climbs into the air and sings.

The whistler is the Malabar whistling thrush, known to generations of planters as the "whistling schoolboy". The flock is made up of Indian white-eyes. The singer on the grassland could be a Nilgiri pipit, a bird found in only a few mountain ranges in the world, all of them in the southern Western Ghats. In one short walk you have met birds that are common, birds that are endemic to the Ghats, and a bird that is threatened with extinction.

The Western Ghats hold more than 500 species of birds, and between about 20 and 30 of them, depending on how species are defined, are found nowhere else in the world. Munnar, at the centre of the highest and richest part of the range, is one of the best places in India to see them. This article is an introduction to the birds of Munnar and the Western Ghats, with particular attention to the endemic and threatened species that most need our care.

A naturalist's inheritance

The modern study of the birds of these hills began with Salim Ali, India's most celebrated ornithologist. In 1933 he carried out a survey of the birds of the princely states of Travancore and Cochin, travelling through the forests and hills with collectors and local guides. His findings were published in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, and later in his book The Birds of Travancore and Cochin (1953). Earlier observers, including colonial naturalists and planters, had described many of the birds of the High Range, and their names survive in birds such as Jerdon's nightjar and the Fairbank's laughingthrush, named after a missionary at Kodaikanal.

Today, research by institutions such as the Bombay Natural History Society, the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History, the Nature Conservation Foundation, the National Centre for Biological Sciences and the Kerala Forest Research Institute, together with thousands of birdwatchers contributing observations to online databases, has given us a far better picture of the region's birds than ever before.

How mountains make new species

The southern Western Ghats are a natural laboratory of evolution. The high plateaus above about 1,500 m, covered in grassland and small patches of shola forest, are separated from one another by warm, low valleys. Birds adapted to the cool, wet sholas rarely cross these valleys, and over many thousands of years, populations on separate mountain ranges have drifted apart. The biggest barrier of all is the Palghat Gap, a 30 to 40 km break in the mountains near Palakkad.

In 2017, a team of scientists led by V. V. Robin of the National Centre for Biological Sciences published a study based on DNA, song and appearance that changed our understanding of these birds. They showed that the laughingthrushes and the shortwings of the sky islands were not close relatives of similar birds in the Himalaya, as had long been assumed, but distinct lineages that had evolved in the Western Ghats. They placed them in two new genera: Montecincla, the laughingthrushes, and Sholicola, the "sholakilis" or shola birds, a name taken from Malayalam. They also described a new species, the Ashambu sholakili, from the hills of the far south.

The result is a pattern of closely related species, each on its own group of mountains:

The Palani laughingthrush (Montecincla fairbanki) is a bird of Munnar. It is a medium-sized, olive-brown bird with a grey bib, a rufous belly and a broad white stripe above the eye, which lives in pairs and small groups in sholas, forest edges and even gardens above about 1,100 m. It feeds on insects, berries and the nectar of flowers such as rhododendron and Strobilanthes. Its loud, cheerful calls are one of the characteristic sounds of the High Range. The white-bellied sholakili (Sholicola albiventris), formerly called the white-bellied shortwing, is a small, dark slaty-blue bird with a white belly that skulks on the floor of dense shola forest. It is shy and easily overlooked, but its sweet song gives it away.

Birds of the high grasslands

The montane grasslands of Eravikulam and the surrounding hills look empty at first glance. In fact they hold some of the most specialised and threatened birds in India.

Nilgiri pipit (Vulnerable)

The Nilgiri pipit (Anthus nilghiriensis) is a small, streaky, brown bird of the high grasslands, usually seen walking among the tussocks or perched on a rock. It is found only in the southern Western Ghats, mostly above about 1,500 m, in the Nilgiris, the Anamalai, the High Range of Munnar, the Palani Hills and a few other high ranges. Its entire range covers only about 8,000 square kilometres, and within it, the bird lives only in grassland.

The Nilgiri pipit is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. The State of India's Birds 2023 report placed it among the species of high conservation concern, with evidence of a long-term decline. Its main threat is the loss of its grasslands: to tea and other plantations in the past, and today to the spread of invasive wattle, eucalyptus and pine, which turn open grassland into scrub and woodland. Eravikulam, with its large, protected grasslands, is one of its most important strongholds.

Broad-tailed grassbird (Near Threatened)

The broad-tailed grassbird (Schoenicola platyurus) is a dark-brown, long-tailed warbler that lives in tall, damp grass and bracken on hillsides. For much of the year it is almost impossible to see, but in the breeding season, males climb into the air in a short song flight before dropping back into the grass. It is endemic to the Western Ghats, has a small and fragmented range, and is listed as Near Threatened, with the State of India's Birds report placing it in the high-priority category.

Other grassland birds

The painted bush quail, an Indian endemic, moves through the grass in small coveys. In the winter months, the grasslands and rocky slopes attract migrants such as the blue rock thrush and the Eurasian kestrel. Over the cliffs of Eravikulam, a shaheen falcon, the resident Indian form of the peregrine, may stoop at a flock of swifts, and the great black eagle glides slowly along the edge of the forest, looking for nests to raid.

Birds of the sholas

The small, dense forests of the high valleys are home to a remarkable community of birds, many of them endemic.

Nilgiri wood pigeon (Vulnerable)

The Nilgiri wood pigeon (Columba elphinstonii) is a large, dark pigeon with a beautiful chequered black-and-white patch on the back of its neck. It is endemic to the Western Ghats and lives in evergreen and shola forest, where it feeds on fruits and berries in the canopy. It is a shy bird, usually seen flying fast between trees or heard giving its deep, owl-like call. The pigeon depends on large tracts of wet forest and has declined as these have been cleared and broken up, and as it has been hunted. It is listed as Vulnerable.

Flycatchers

The Nilgiri flycatcher (Eumyias albicaudatus), a dusky blue bird of the shola edges, and the tiny black-and-orange flycatcher (Ficedula nigrorufa), one of the most beautiful small birds in India, are both endemic to the high hills of the southern Western Ghats and listed as Near Threatened. Scientists have warned that, as the climate warms and the cool forests shift uphill, these mountaintop flycatchers could lose a large part of their range. The white-bellied blue flycatcher and the grey-headed canary-flycatcher are also found in these forests.

The voices of the forest

The Malabar whistling thrush (Myophonus horsfieldii), a dark blue-black bird with a shining blue shoulder patch, lives along forest streams and is famous for its whistled song. The Indian blackbird, the Nilgiri thrush, the Indian scimitar babbler with its long, curved yellow bill, the square-tailed bulbul, the tiny Nilgiri flowerpecker and the Indian white-eye complete the shola community. In the evenings the Sri Lanka bay owl, a strange, chestnut-coloured owl with a heart-shaped face, may call from the forest.

Birds of the rainforest

Below the high plateaus, the western slopes of the Ghats are clothed in tall wet evergreen and semi-evergreen forest. These forests are home to the most spectacular birds of the region.

Hornbills: the farmers of the forest

The great hornbill (Buceros bicornis) is one of the largest and most magnificent birds in Asia, with a wingspan of up to one and a half metres and a huge yellow casque on top of its bill. The sound of its wingbeats, a loud whooshing that can be heard from far away, is unforgettable. The great hornbill is the state bird of Kerala, and it is listed as Vulnerable.

The Malabar grey hornbill (Ocyceros griseus), smaller and grey with a red bill, is endemic to the Western Ghats and is now also listed as Vulnerable. The Malabar pied hornbill (Near Threatened) is found mainly in the lower, riverside forests.

Hornbills nest in holes in large old trees. The female seals herself into the hole with mud and droppings, leaving only a narrow slit, and the male feeds her and the chick through the slit for weeks. Because they swallow large fruits and spread the seeds over long distances, hornbills are among the most important seed dispersers in the forest, and they are sometimes called "farmers of the forest". They need tall, mature trees to nest in, and the felling of such trees is one of the biggest threats to their survival.

Jewels of the canopy and the forest floor

Other birds of the rainforest include the brilliantly coloured Malabar trogon, the Sri Lanka frogmouth, a nocturnal bird whose camouflage makes it look like a broken branch, the noisy white-bellied treepie, the Malabar parakeet with its blue-grey plumage, the tiny crimson-backed sunbird, one of the smallest birds in India, the rufous babbler, the Wynaad laughingthrush, the grey-headed bulbul and the flame-throated bulbul, the heart-spotted woodpecker and the large, black white-bellied woodpecker. Many of these are endemic to the Western Ghats or to the Western Ghats and Sri Lanka. The forests around Thattekkad, the bird sanctuary on the Periyar river studied by Salim Ali, are the best place near Munnar to see them.

Birds of the rain shadow: Chinnar

To the northeast of Munnar, the road drops through Marayoor into a completely different world. The Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary, in the rain shadow of the Ghats, is a land of thorn scrub, dry deciduous forest and riverside trees. Its birds are those of the dry plains of Tamil Nadu: Indian peafowl, grey junglefowl (an Indian endemic, and one of the ancestors of the domestic chicken), bee-eaters, rollers and larks.

The special bird of Chinnar is the yellow-throated bulbul (Pycnonotus xantholaemus), a plain, olive bird with a bright yellow throat that lives on rocky, scrub-covered hillsides. It is found only in a few dry hill ranges of southern India and is listed as Vulnerable. Chinnar is one of the few places in Kerala where it can be seen.

Winter visitors

From October to April, birds that breed in the Himalaya and in northern Asia spend the winter in the Western Ghats. Among them are the blue-capped rock thrush, the Indian blue robin, the Tickell's thrush, the grey wagtail, which bobs along every hill stream, and the Indian pitta, one of the most colourful birds in India.

The most important of these visitors, from a conservation point of view, is the Kashmir flycatcher (Ficedula subrubra). It breeds in a small area of the western Himalaya, in Kashmir and neighbouring regions, and spends the winter almost entirely in Sri Lanka and the hills of the southern Western Ghats. It is listed as Vulnerable. A small, orange-breasted flycatcher in a Munnar garden in December may have travelled more than 2,500 km from the forests of Kashmir.

The vultures: a story of collapse and slow recovery

Until the 1990s, vultures were among the most familiar birds in India. Then, in little more than a decade, the populations of three species fell by more than 95 per cent. Scientists discovered that the cause was diclofenac, a painkiller given to cattle, which caused fatal kidney failure in vultures that fed on the carcasses. Diclofenac for veterinary use was banned in India in 2006.

In the southern Western Ghats, vultures now survive mainly in the forests where Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu meet: Wayanad, Mudumalai, Bandipur, Nagarhole and Sathyamangalam. A synchronised census by the Kerala Forest Department in February 2025 counted 113 vultures in Wayanad, more than double the previous year: 90 white-rumped vultures, 17 red-headed vultures and 6 Indian vultures. All three species are listed as Critically Endangered. They are rarely, if ever, seen around Munnar today, but their recovery in Wayanad is one of the most hopeful conservation stories in South India.

What threatens the birds

• Loss of grassland. The high grasslands have been squeezed by plantations and by invasive trees. Grassland specialists like the Nilgiri pipit and the broad-tailed grassbird have nowhere else to go.
• Fragmented forests. Sholas and rainforests have been broken up by tea, coffee, cardamom and timber plantations, roads and reservoirs. Forest birds like the Nilgiri wood pigeon and the hornbills need large areas of connected forest and big old trees.
• Climate change. The birds of the sky islands are adapted to cool, wet conditions. As temperatures rise, their habitat is predicted to move uphill and shrink.
• Poisons. Veterinary drugs like diclofenac destroyed the vultures, and pesticides used in agriculture and plantations continue to affect insect-eating birds.
• Disturbance. Unregulated tourism, loud music, litter and the use of recorded calls to attract birds for photography all add pressure on sensitive species.

Watching birds responsibly

The birds of Munnar are a living record of the long history of these mountains. Some, like the laughingthrushes and sholakilis, are the product of millions of years of evolution on isolated hilltops. Others, like the Kashmir flycatcher, link Munnar to forests thousands of kilometres away. Their future depends on what we do with the grasslands and forests of the Western Ghats in the next few decades. (For the mammals of the region, read our companion article on the wild animals of Munnar and the Western Ghats, and for an introduction to the landscape, Tahr, tuskers and shola forests.)