IDENTITY:
Male has black or dark grey upperparts, black breast, and rufous underparts. Female and first-year male are almost entirely dusky brown with rufous-orange wash on lower flanks and belly. Juvenile has diffuse dark scaling on upperparts and underparts, and fine buff greater-covert bar. Male P. o. phoenicuroides (W Himalayas) hs grey crown, nape and lower back; these areas are much blacker in P.o. rufiventris (C and E Himalayas).
HABIT AND HABITED:
Breeds in Tibetan steppe habitat; winters in cultivation and plantations. Black Redstart frequents rocky areas with some vegetation, stony slopes, crags and gulleys in mountainous areas.
FOOD:
Black Redstart feeds mainly on invertebrates such as grasshoppers, bugs, lepidopteran insects, flies, ants, bees, wasps, beetles, spiders, small molluscs and earth worms. It also feeds on berries, fruits and seeds. The diet may vary according to the location
VOICE:
Black Redstart utters sharp tsip, sometimes in series tsip-tsip-tsip, as contact or alarm call. In territorial defence, it gives hard tuc. When the bird is really threatened, it utters both sounds tsip-tk-tk. During courtship displays and fights, it gives short whistles and churrs. The song is variable with some mimicry, composed with weak warbling phrases, often beginning with the tsip note, followed by rolling truee-truee-truee.
INFO:
The black redstart (Phoenicurus ochruros) is a small passerine bird in the redstart genus Phoenicurus. Like its relatives, it was formerly classed as a member of the thrush family (Turdidae), but is now known to be an Old World flycatcher (Muscicapidae). Other common names are Tithy's redstart, blackstart and black redtail. The black redstart is 13–14.5 cm (5.1–5.7 in) in length and 12–20 g (0.42–0.71 oz) in weight, similar to the common redstart. The adult male is overall dark grey to black on the upperparts and with a black breast; the lower rump and tail are orange-red, with the two central tail feathers dark red-brown. The belly and undertail are either blackish-grey (western subspecies; see Taxonomy and systematics, above) or orange-red (eastern subspecies); the wings are blackish-grey with pale fringes on the secondaries forming a whitish panel (western subspecies) or all blackish (eastern subspecies). The female is grey (western subspecies) to grey-brown (eastern subspecies) overall except for the orange-red lower rump and tail, greyer than the common redstart; at any age the grey axillaries and underwing coverts are also distinctive (in the common redstart these are buff to orange-red). One-year-old males are similar to females but blacker; the whitish wing panel of the western subspecies does not develop until the second year.
DISTRIBUTION MAP:
