Pale-footed Bush Warbler

The pale-footed bush warbler is an oriental warbler of the family Cettiidae found in southern Asia. It occurs in the Himalayan region west from Dehradun through the foothills of Nepal to north-eastern India, and Salim Ali and Sidney Dillon Ripley reported it breeding in the Eastern Ghats, collecting a specimen at about 1,000 m at Sunkarametta, Araku Valley, Visakhapatnam district, in April. It also occurs in Myanmar, Laos, northern Vietnam and southern China (Wikipedia, general species account).

It is extremely shy and a great skulker, very hard to see even in the breeding season, which is May to July; it moves low through grass reeds, feeding on the lower half. Its loud, explosive song is the best sign of its presence. In Thailand its habitat is grassland and scrub from the foothills up to 1,800 m, and in China woodland up to 1,525 m. SoIB 2023 rates it a High conservation priority, a resident and local migrant forest bird with a Very Restricted range of about 2,140 km² (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).