If you have a Lantana bush or a similar shrub in your neighbourhood, you’re likely to catch this small urban-garden bird, Ashy Prinia that thrives in varied habitats, including urban settlements. While it’s endemic (only found) to the Indian subcontinent, it’s breeding right now in Delhi, so easy to catch glimpses of.
True to its scientific name, Prinia socialis, ( socialis means sociable in Latin), and unlike many small, shy birds, the Ashy Prinia is happy to show itself, so non-birdwatchers can spot it easily. The males and females look similar and the birds are often found in pairs rather than flocks.
Ashy Prinia
It has a wheezy song: jimmy-jimmy-jimmy, or zeet-zeet-zeet, or the metallic yet striking tee-tee-tee. We often see it foraging for insects in the undergrowth or on the ground, or calling out from perches like electrical wires and other open perches though.
The bird is a small passerine (birds having feet adapted for perching) that has a slightly-curved black bill (beak), ideal to ferret out larvae and insects from crevices. The bird is fast and has jerky reflexes, catching insects in mid air – a difficult task considering their zig-zag flying pattern.
The Ashy Prinia has an ashy-coloured head, greyish-brown back and buff-orangey underpart. It has an upright tail (with white edges), red eyes, and often a short white eyebrow (called supercilium in the birding world, though this may not be always be present in all birds).
A mysterious sound that most Prinias (other species as well) make are a sort of clapping frap-frap sound, when in flight.
Some naturalists say it’s the snapping of the tail, others that the birds make it with their beaks, and still others like Douglas Dewar, a prominent nature author, feel it’s the beating of the wings with the tail. Whenever I am out leading nature trails, I call attention to this bird’s tail that seems to have a ‘mind of its own’!
These birds mostly breed from April to September, when the males usually sit atop branches of trees or shrubs and sing loudly, often engaging in aerial displays to attract females. They usually build their nests in shrubs close to the ground or in tall grasses (reed beds near wetlands) but have also been observed to nest in balconies and crevices of buildings. Like so much of Nature, this too is opportunistic behaviour, to survive.
Like Common Tailorbirds, Ashy Prinias also stitch leaves together (to resemble a small bag) with silk from spiders webs, and often line these nests with grass strands, leaving a small entrance on one side for the adults to enter and exit.
The species has been found to be monogamous and both parents take turns in incubating eggs and feeding the young ones.
Cuckoos, being brood parasites, often lay their eggs in nearby Ashy Prinia nests and leave their young to be taken care of by the Prinia parents. I once wrote in my nature journal (yes, I maintain one!), a small bird sitting on the head of a much bigger bird and feeding it in Lodhi Garden. The former turned out to be the Ashy Prinia and the younger but bigger bird was an Asian Koel juvenile. Funny for an onlooker, not for the Prinia parents, who would have had to work doubly hard to procure food for the bigger bird.
The writer is the founder of NINOX - Owl About Nature, a nature-awareness initiative. He is the Delhi-NCR reviewer for Ebird, a Cornell University initiative, monitoring rare sightings of birds. He formerly led a programme of WWF India.
