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Indian White-Eye | Zosterops palpebrosus
Indische brilvogel | Anteojitos indio
The Indian White-eye is a small yellow white-eye from South Asia. In the region only a small, isolated group lives in the mangroves of Mahawt Island on the Omani Arabian Sea coast, hundreds of kilometres from the nearest natural occurrence; how the birds got there is unknown.
Voice
A soft, nasal, somewhat plaintive dzee or chee, often repeated by the flock; the song is a fast, high, twittering jingle.
No recording with a suitable Creative Commons licence is available for this species yet.
Identification
10 cm. Small and round-headed, with a fine, slightly decurved dark bill. Upperparts bright yellow-green, forehead, throat and undertail coverts bright yellow; breast and belly pale grey to greyish white. A broad, conspicuous white eye-ring, narrowly broken at the front, with a fine black loral line below and in front of the eye. Wings and tail dark with green edges. Sexes alike; juveniles have a smaller eye-ring.
Confusion species
Abyssinian White-eye (Zosterops abyssinicus) of the mountains of southwest Arabia and Dhofar and the Saudi Red Sea mangroves is very similar, but has a duller, more olive-green back, a less bright yellow throat and a paler bill; in practice location decides, as the two do not occur together. Socotra White-eye (Zosterops socotranus) occurs only on Socotra. Leaf warblers lack the white eye-ring; sunbirds have a long, strongly decurved bill.
Habitat
In the region exclusively in mangrove forest (Avicennia), where small groups move through the canopy in search of insects and nectar. In the native range in all kinds of woodland, gardens and scrub.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the habitats of North Africa and the Middle East.
Range and movements
Introduced or of uncertain origin; the species does not naturally originate from the region. Oman: a small population in the mangroves of Mahawt Island on the edge of the Gulf of Masirah, known since its discovery in 1999 and apparently persisting; as the species does not occur elsewhere in Arabia, the birds are assumed to have arrived by ship or with human help, but this is not certain. Single birds elsewhere in the Gulf states should be regarded as escaped cage birds. The native range lies outside the region: from eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan through India, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh to Myanmar and southwest China.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
The Mahawt mangroves can only be reached by boat from the Barr al Hikman coast. Listen in the canopy for the soft, nasal contact call of roving groups.
Conservation status
Not globally threatened. In the region a small, isolated population of uncertain origin, probably introduced by humans; vulnerable because of its small numbers and tiny habitat.
Scientific name
Zosterops palpebrosus | (Temminck, 1824)
Temminck described the species in 1824 as Sylvia palpebrosa; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Zosterops was introduced in 1827 by Vigors & Horsfield. Zosterops comes from the Greek zōstēr, 'belt, girdle', and ōps, 'eye' — for the white eye-ring shown by most white-eyes. palpebrosus is Latin for 'with prominent eyelids', from palpebra 'eyelid', after the white eye-ring. The specimen the first description was based on came from Bengal, India and Bangladesh.