Wildlife · Birds · 10 min read

The White-bellied Treepie: A Clever Neighbour from the Western Ghats Forests

Chestnut, black, white and silver, with a tail longer than its body and a voice full of whistles, clicks and chatter, the white-bellied treepie is a crow of the Western Ghats forests. It is intelligent, curious and sociable, and, as one family in the cardamom hills has shown me, capable of a real friendship with people.

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

It usually announces itself before it arrives: a burst of ringing whistles, metallic clicks and harsh chatter from the trees. Then a long-tailed bird glides across the clearing with a few flaps and a long, swooping glide, its tail streaming behind it like a ribbon, and lands on a branch. It bows, droops its wings and calls again. This is the white-bellied treepie, one of the most beautiful and most intelligent birds of the Western Ghats.

A crow in fine clothes

Treepies are long-tailed members of the crow family, found across southern and southeastern Asia. India has several species. The most familiar is the rufous treepie, known in Malayalam as kattu olenjali. The white-bellied treepie is its forest cousin, and it is found only in southern India.

It is a striking bird. The head, neck and underparts are white; the face, throat and breast are black, like a hood; the back is a rich chestnut; the wings are black with a white patch; and the long, graduated tail is silver-grey, tipped with black. The bill is black and strong, the bill of a crow. Seen in a sunbeam in the forest, it is one of the most elegant birds in South India. Males and females look alike.

The white-bellied treepie was described scientifically by the English ornithologist John Gould in the 1830s. Its scientific name means "white-bellied tree-magpie".

Where it lives

The white-bellied treepie is a bird of the forests of the Western Ghats, from Goa and Karnataka south through Kerala and the hills of Tamil Nadu. It lives in evergreen, semi-evergreen and moist deciduous forest, and in the shaded coffee, cardamom and mixed plantations that surround them. A few records come from outside this range, from the Eastern Ghats of Andhra Pradesh, the Dangs in Gujarat and the hills near Dharmapuri in Tamil Nadu.

It is much more a bird of the forest than its cousin the rufous treepie, which has adapted well to towns and gardens. Where the two meet, the white-bellied treepie generally keeps to denser woodland, but the two species can also be seen together: in the forest and cardamom plantations where I work, I have watched white-bellied treepies moving and feeding in company with rufous treepies and ashy drongos. In Kerala it is found along the forested slopes of the Ghats, including the forests below Munnar, and in sanctuaries such as Thattekkad, where it is one of the endemic birds that visitors most want to see.

According to the State of India's Birds report, the species occupies a range of about 62,000 square kilometres and has probably declined over the long term, though the uncertainty in this estimate is large. It is classed as a species of moderate conservation concern in India. Because it depends on forest, its future is tied to the future of the forests of the Western Ghats.

A clever, curious forager

Like most members of the crow family, the white-bellied treepie eats almost anything. Its diet includes fruits and seeds, nectar, insects and other invertebrates, lizards and other small reptiles, small rodents, and the eggs and nestlings of other birds. It searches through the canopy and the middle storey of the forest, hopping along branches, probing into crevices and leaves, and sometimes coming down to the ground.

White-bellied treepies are sociable birds. They are usually seen in pairs or small groups, and they often join mixed-species foraging flocks: travelling parties of many different kinds of birds that move through the forest together, finding more food and spotting predators more easily than any one bird could alone. Treepies are often found in these flocks with the greater racket-tailed drongo, itself a famous mimic and sentinel. In the cardamom plantations where I work, I have also seen them keeping company with the ashy drongo, a slender, dark grey bird with a long forked tail and red eyes, many of which reach South India as winter visitors from the north. Drongos are alert and noisy, quick to raise the alarm when a hawk or other predator appears, and many birds benefit from their watchfulness.

A voice of many parts

The white-bellied treepie has a remarkable range of calls: ringing, bell-like whistles, metallic clicks and rattles, and harsh, scolding chatter. When calling, it often bows and droops its wings. Several birds may gather in one tree and call back and forth for long periods, as if holding a conversation. Its calls are quite different from those of the rufous treepie, and experienced birdwatchers can tell the two apart by voice alone.

Family life

The white-bellied treepie breeds before the monsoon, mainly in April and May, though some nests have been found as early as February. The pair builds a rough, shallow platform of twigs in a medium-sized tree, often well hidden among leaves or creepers. The female usually lays three eggs, ashy-grey and blotched with green and grey.

As in other treepies, both parents are thought to share the work of building the nest and feeding the chicks. After the young leave the nest they often stay with their parents for some time, learning where to find food and how to avoid danger, so small family groups of three, four or five birds are commonly seen together after the breeding season.

The intelligence of crows

To understand the white-bellied treepie, it helps to remember who its relatives are. The crow family is famous for its intelligence. Crows, ravens, jays and magpies have brains that are very large for the size of their bodies, and in tests of problem-solving, memory and social learning they perform as well as many primates.

Crows and their relatives also recognise individual people. In a well-known series of experiments at the University of Washington, beginning in 2006, the researcher John Marzluff and his colleagues trapped and released wild crows while wearing a particular mask. Long afterwards, crows scolded anyone wearing that mask, while ignoring people in other masks. Even crows that had never been trapped learned to scold the "dangerous" face, apparently from watching the others. The same intelligence that lets crows remember a threat lets them remember a friend.

Little research has been done on the white-bellied treepie itself. But it shares the curiosity, adaptability and social intelligence of its family, and people who live near the forest in the Western Ghats tell many stories of treepies that become familiar with particular households.

A family at our door

We know this from our own experience. I work as a property manager at a resort set within forest land and shaded cardamom plantations: exactly the kind of place white-bellied treepies love, where tall forest trees shade the cardamom below. A family of four white-bellied treepies lives there, and I have known them for more than two years. Their nest and their usual perches are far away from where I work, yet they recognise me from a long distance and fly in to be near me. They visit regularly. They come close, and they talk to me in their varied language of whistles and chatter. And they call to me with a special tone, a call they seem to use for me alone, which I have learned to recognise. When I hear it, I know my friends have come. Sometimes they ask for food. They are fond of rice, and I give them only a little plain boiled rice, with nothing added. I have also seen them in the company of their cousins, the rufous treepies, the kattu olenjali of our hills, and of ashy drongos.

It is a privilege to be recognised and greeted by a wild bird. Experiences like ours are a reminder that the forest is not something separate from us, and that the birds around our homes are individuals, with their own personalities, families and memories. It is also a reminder of the responsibility that comes with such a friendship: to keep our wild friends wild, healthy and safe.

The white-bellied treepie is one of the many birds found only in the Western Ghats, and one of the most rewarding to watch. Whether you see it in the forests of Thattekkad or on a tree outside your window, take a moment to listen to its conversation. It may be talking to you. (Read also our article on the birds of Munnar and the Western Ghats.)