Bird watching in neighborhood – Yellow Billed Babbler

Among the many birds that visit our courtyard or neighborhood, Yellow Billed Babbler is most frequent and almost every day I sight these birds or hear their loud shrills. They arrive as a group of six or seven, kept squeaking and foraging by tiny flights.  

The birds present can be noticed by their distinct noise produced by their overall chattering and chirping sound; go on the ground or on low branches for forage while one of them perches to high branches as sentinel. The common resident of the south Indian peninsula and Sri Lanka, Yellow-billed Babbl looks almost gray in color with light gray shades on head and belly.

The birds also called as White-headed Babbler is fed on tiny insects and grains and locally we call this bird as ‘Thavuttu Kuruvi’ in Tamil, which means Barn Sparrows.