Laughingthrush is not even a thrush technically… underlining the eccentricity of common names, at times amusing, at times exasperating, a rabbit hole where one can never be sure of their accuracy, yet risks missing an important historical or cultural context by ignoring them… for birds carry with them a directory of human vagrants who marginalized social constructs to follow their trail, and these names, common or scientific, carry their tales…

Not that the laughingthrush laughs too, it’s more like a cackle or an urgent whistle, nagging pertinaciously rather than beckoning melodiously… it’s not really discordant though, there is a certain lilt to it that blooms with patience, like the sweet afternotes of a coffee or a dram… a sense of aesthetic that precludes any science… an acceptance of ‘because they can’ before inquiring ‘why they do’…

This streaked laughingthrush was out and about on the top of its lungs as I was begrudging losing a black-throated tit to my slow reflexes… the apple and cherry trees were in an exuberant April bloom and the avifauna was out for the spring soiree… busy marauding the flora for food or exploring its nooks and crannies for shelter… initially I wasn’t even interested, still sore over the tit that got away, but it kept singing so vociferously that one had to relent…

There must be more to birdsong that just routine communication, the thought has piqued many over centuries and spurned many a thesis… for there are moments when you feel they are just revelling in the act, spurned by the beauty they embody or the beauty that surrounds them… going beyond utility and venturing into the ornamental… the laughingthrush sang continuously for a couple of minutes before changing perch and becoming invisible to our frame, and we wandered away to chase a bushchat that had landed on a wire some distance away…

Musing on a Streaked laughingthrush, Thanedar, Himachal Pradesh