Red-whiskered bulbul | Pycnonotus jocosus

Voice

A loud, cheerful run of three or four clear notes, usually written kink-a-joo or pettigrew, with the stress on the last note; in Valencia it is the sound that gives a suburb away. There is also a sharp, excited pit-pit and a chattering scold when alarmed. The birds are noisy all year and like to call from a treetop or a TV aerial, most often early in the morning.

Identification

A slim, long-tailed bulbul with a tall, pointed and usually upright black crest — the most obvious feature, even at range and in silhouette. The cheek is clean white and is bordered below by a black line that runs from the side of the neck as a short spur onto the breast. Behind and below the eye sits a small, deep red patch: the 'whisker' that gives the bird its name. Upperparts are plain grey-brown, underparts white; the undertail coverts are crimson. The tail is long and brown with white tips. Sexes alike. Juveniles lack the red cheek spot entirely, have a lower and browner crest, and show orange-pink rather than red undertail coverts.

Confusion species

Do not confuse it with Red-vented Bulbul, which breeds on Fuerteventura and has turned up on the Spanish mainland: that bird has a black head with a low, almost smoothly laid crest, a scaly brown breast, a black white-tipped tail and red undertail coverts, but no red cheek spot and no white cheek. Common Bulbul, of North Africa and Tarifa, is plain brown, crestless and without any red. A crested silhouette alone might suggest Crested Tit, but that species is a quarter of the size and carries a speckled triangular crest instead of a long straight spike.

Habitat

In Europe almost entirely town and suburb: residential districts with plenty of gardens, city parks, tree lines along the old river course, allotments and the orange and persimmon groves of the Valencian huerta. In its native range in South and South-East Asia it is a bird of forest edge, secondary scrub, tea plantations, villages and farmland up to about 1,500 metres; it avoids closed forest. The diet is largely fruit and blossom, with nectar and insects added. The nest is a neat cup of twigs, rootlets and grasses in a shrub or low tree, often worked through with conspicuous material such as bark strips, paper or plastic.

Range and movements

Native to India, the Himalayan foothills, southern China and South-East Asia. Feral populations exist on Mauritius and Réunion, in Australia, on Hawaii, in Florida and in the Gulf states. In Europe there is one core: the Turia valley at Valencia, where the species has been seen since about 2003 and where some 100 to 150 birds were present around 2016, spread over several municipalities and still increasing. Smaller escapes elsewhere in Spain, Italy and France have not held on; on the Canary Islands an incipient population was successfully removed.

• Resident
• Winter
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

Where and when to look

From March to August walk the garden suburbs along the old Turia bed in Valencia early in the morning and go by ear first: the loud kink-a-joo carries well and almost always comes from a bird sitting openly on a topmost twig. Once you hear it the bird is easy to find — the species is not shy and feeds readily in figs, mulberries and persimmons in front gardens.

Conservation status

Not globally threatened (IUCN: Least Concern), although trapping for the cage-bird trade puts the species under heavy pressure in Thailand and parts of Indochina. In Europe it is a naturalised introduction, founded on cage birds that escaped or were released. Spain has listed it in the Catálogo Español de Especies Exóticas Invasoras, which bans trade and keeping and allows control. No damage to native birds has yet been demonstrated in Valencia, but the species has a poor record elsewhere: on islands it spreads the seeds of invasive shrubs and damages fruit crops, and experience shows that intervention only works while the population is still small.