Himalayan Forest Thrush

Himalayan Forest Thrush

A new species of birds has been discovered in the snow-capped mountains of the Himalayas. The new bird has been named as the Himalayan Forest Thrush. It is mostly found in the northeastern India and parts of Tibet, Nepal and China. The scientific name of the bird is Zoothera salimalii. The name 'salimalii' is commemorative of the great Indian ornithologist Salim Ali. The Himalayan Forest Thrush is a variant of the Plain Backed Thrush and the European Alpine Thrush. Professor Per Johan Alstrom, a former member of the Uppsala University in Sweden, first noticed the distinctive call of the Himalayan Forest Thrush back in 1999, during a trip to Arunachal Pradesh.

Alstrom, along with his Indian colleague Shashank Dalvi, noticed the two distinctive variants of the Plain Backed Thrush that occurred at different elevations of the mountains. One set of the bird sang a harsh tune sitting above tree line of the forest, while the other set of the bird churned out a tuneful call sitting below the tree line. Unable to find any physical distinction between the two sets of birds, Alstrom spent several years defining the difference. The alpine thrush has longer legs and a longer tail, proportionately, than the forest bird, which are adaptations to its habitat. Because longer legs are more useful in open habitats than in forest. He collected samples of birds of India and China from the 15 museums around the world and studied them for several years. The study of birds also included DNA tests that confirmed the difference between the two species. The two species evolved differently to adapt with the different conditions of the peaks and the mountain forests. During their trips to India and China, Alstrom has also found a Chinese sub-species of the Himalayan Forest Thrush and named it as the Sichuan Forest Thrush.