Pied bush chat

The pied bush chat (Saxicola caprata) is a small passerine bird found ranging from West Asia and Central Asia to the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia. About sixteen subspecies are recognized through its wide range with many island forms. It is a familiar bird of countryside and open scrub or grassland where it is found perched at the top of short thorn trees or other shrubs, looking out for insect prey. They pick up insects mainly from the ground, and were, like other chats, placed in the thrush family Turdidae, but are now considered as Old World flycatchers.

They nest in cavities in stone walls or in holes in an embankment, lining the nest with grass and animal hair. The males are black with white shoulder and vent patches whose extent varies among populations. Females are predominantly brownish while juveniles are speckled.

In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the pied bush chat in his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected from the island of Luzon in the Philippines. He used the French name Le traquet de l'Isle de Luçon and the Latin Rubetra Lucionensis. Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson. One of these was the pied bush chat. Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name Motacilla caprata and cited Brisson's work. The specific epithet caprata is from a local name in Luzon which according to Brisson was Maria-capra. This species is now placed in the genus Saxicola that was introduced by the German naturalist Johann Matthäus Bechstein in 1802. There are 16 recognised subspecies.

At 13 cm (5.1 in), the pied bush chat is slightly smaller than the Siberian stonechat, Saxicola maurus, although it has a similar dumpy structure and upright stance. The male is black except for a white rump, wing patch and lower belly. The iris is dark brown, the bill and legs black. The female is drab brown and slightly streaked. Juveniles have a scaly appearance on the underside but dark above like the females.

A number of geographic populations have been given subspecies status:

Some of these isolated populations are found on islands and they include:

This species is closely related to the European-African stonechat complex. S. c. fruticola from Indonesia (Moyo Island population appeared to be well differentiated from specimens from Lembata Island with a divergence estimated to about 360,000 years ago.), S. c. pyrrhonota from West Timor (Indonesia).

Local names include Kala pidda in Hindi Shyama in Gujarati Kavda gapidda in Marathi Kallu kuruvi in Tamil, Kampa nalanchi in Telugu. The Fore people of New Guinea called it pobogile. They were once popular in Bengal as cage birds. They are still found in the local bird trade of some parts of Southeast Asia.