Asian Fairy-bluebird

The Asian fairy-bluebird is a medium-sized arboreal passerine of forests across tropical southern Asia, Indochina and the Greater Sundas, 24–27 cm long. The male has glossy, iridescent blue upperparts and black underparts and flight feathers, a crimson iris and pinkish eyelids, and a black bill, legs and claws; the female is brownish blue with brighter feather edges, and young birds resemble the female, with the lower plumage mixed black and dull blue. In India it is found on the western coast from Travancore up to the latitude of Shivamogga, Belgaum and Sawantwadi; in Sikkim and the lower Himalaya to Dibrugarh in Assam; the Khasi Hills; Cachar; Manipur; and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (Wikipedia, general species account).

It eats fruits, nectar and some insects, and its call is a liquid two-note glue-it. It breeds from February to April, building a shallow cup nest, sometimes of moss and sometimes of small twigs, in a sapling or small tree, and lays two or, less often, three greenish-white eggs marked with brown. SoIB 2023 rates it a Moderate conservation priority, a resident forest bird with a Moderate range of about 164,000 km² and a decline of about 48% over the long term (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).