Common Tailorbird

The common tailorbird is a small, wren-like songbird, 10–14cm long and 6–10g, with short rounded wings, strong legs, a sharp bill with a curved tip and a long tail held upright and often waved about. It is olive-green above and creamy white below, with a rufous forehead and crown. The sexes look alike, though males may have longer central tail feathers when breeding. When it calls, dark patches of bare skin show on the sides of the neck. It was immortalised by Kipling as Darzee in The Jungle Book (Wikipedia, general species account).

It lives in open farmland, scrub, forest edges and gardens and is a common resident of town gardens. It is shy and usually hidden in vegetation, but its loud calls are very familiar. It is named for its nest: it pierces the edges of a large leaf and sews them together with plant fibre or spider silk to make a cradle in which the real nest is built. In India it is resident across a very large range; SoIB 2023 estimates a long-term increase of about 52% and a current rise of about 5% a year, and rates it a Low conservation priority (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).