Spotted Forktail

The spotted forktail is a 25 cm bird with a long tail, found in the Himalaya and the hills of north-east India, Bangladesh, Myanmar and southern China including Yunnan. The sexes are alike, with a white forehead and black crown and nape, a black back spotted white, a broad white wing bar, and a deeply forked, graduated black and white tail. The white-spotted back easily identifies it from other similarly sized forktails (Wikipedia, general species account).

It breeds mostly at 1,200–3,600 m and descends to about 600 m in winter, in subtropical or tropical moist montane forest, where it is found in boulder-strewn torrents, forest streams and roadside canals. Its call is a shrill, screechy KREE, mostly given in flight, and it also makes shrill, squeaky notes when perched. SoIB 2023 rates it a Low conservation priority, a resident and altitudinal migrant with a Moderate range of about 158,000 km² and inconclusive trends (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).