Grey bushchat – like most ‘chats’, ‘tis gregarious and grumpy, not intimidated by human presence, but not too happy about it either… it doesn’t really set the world, or the woods, on fire with its dull grey and white plumage… ‘tis the songs rather, and the nifty movements that set one up into following its trail…

Waiting for these tiny insectivores to alight upon an open perch, one mulls over the songs… the short, shrill calls of the chats, akin to a human ‘chattering’ might have lent them the common name, and maybe a reputation of being a gossip monger among its avifaunal brethren too… sometimes its sounds like a domestic bickering when a pair is hunting together, or one lamenting the other from either side of the road, during the mating season there are serenades, but most of the time, it sounds like a usual household conversation, discussing current events around the woods, decrypting the myriad calls emanating from the canopy…

I was being driven mad by the calls of Great barbets all around the oak and rhododendron forests in these parts, ringing from five in the morning till dusk, but nestled deep in the woods so one really couldn’t spot them easily… in one of the many attempts, I was scrolling through the forests near Sherabling monastery when a pair of grey bushchats zipped through the road, foraging along the roadside shrubbery… the female went scampering into the bushes but the male settled on a few open perches for a while, grumpy as ever and seemingly making it a point to nestle in harsh light subduing its already dull plumage… I tried a few different angles, taking advantage of its fearlessness, but the two-o’ clock sun wasn’t lending itself to good frames at all… after a good ten minutes of trying, we let it carry on squabbling with its better half…

Musing on a Grey bushchat, Bhattu, Bir, Himachal Pradesh