Page:The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma (Birds Vol 1).djvu/403

Fig. 69. — Molpastes leucotis.

Family PYCNONOTIDÆ.

Oates in the first edition of the Avifauna retained the Bulbuls as a Subfamily, Brachypodinæ, of the Timaliidæ but they seem to me to be sufficiently well differentiated to warrant them being treated as a separate family. They form a very numerous group of birds, which are found throughout Southern Asia, practically the whole of Africa, and also the extreme South-West of Europe.

The two principal features by which the Pycnonotidæ can be distinguished from the Timaliidæ are the comparatively short tarsus and the presence of some hairs which grow from the nape. These hairs are often long, fairly numerous and conspicuous, sometimes short, few and inconspicuous but never entirely absent. It is this latter character which separates them from the Timaliidæ, which have short tarsi, such as Chloropsis, Ægithina etc., in addition to which the sexes are alike in the Bulbuls but different in those genera.

In the Bulbuls the young are practically like the adults but sometimes paler and duller and sometimes darker and duller as in Hemixus.