Black-chinned laughingthrush
| Black-chinned laughingthrush | |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Passeriformes |
| Family: | Leiothrichidae |
| Genus: | Montecincla |
| Species: | M. cachinnans |
| Binomial name | |
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Montecincla cachinnans (Jerdon, 1839) |
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| Synonyms | |
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Garrulax cachinnans |
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Garrulax cachinnans
Strophocincla cachinnans
Garrulax jerdoni
Crateropus cachinnans protonym
The black-chinned laughingthrush (Montecincla cachinnans) is a species of laughingthrush endemic to the high elevation areas of the Nilgiris and adjoining hill ranges in Peninsular India. The mosty rufous underparts, olive brown upperparts, a prominent white eyebrow and a black throat make it unmistakable. It is easily detected by its loud series of nasal call notes and can be hard to spot when it is hidden away inside a patch of dense vegetation. The species has a confusing taxonomic history, leading to a range of names. In the past the species was considered to have two subspecies, the nominate form in the Nilgiris (earlier called the Nilgiri laughingthrush or rufous-breasted laughingthrush) and jerdoni (which is now treated as a full species, the Banasura laughingthrush) with a grey upper breast and found in the Brahmagiris of Coorg and Banasura range of Wayanad. They are omnivorous, feeding on a range of insects, berries and nectar.
The species was described by Jerdon in 1839. In 1872 he noted further that the form Trochalopteron jerdoni that he had discovered on the peak of Banasura [=Banasore] in Wynaad would likely also occur in Coorg. He added that they were separated by lower hills despite being only about 50 to 60 miles from the western edge of the Nilgiris. The species jerdoni included fairbanki and meridionale (both from south of the Palghat Gap) while cachinnans was kept separate. This treatment of jerdoni and cachinnans as species continued until 2005 when Rasmussen and Anderton grouped the black-chinned forms north of the Palghat Gap into one species with jerdoni of Coorg-Wynaad treated as a subspecies of cachinnans. The wider distribution of the taxon made the older name of "Nilgiri laughing-thrush" inappropriate. The form south of the Palghat gap without a black chin was elevated to a full species, fairbanki with meridionale as a subspecies, and called the Kerala laughingthrush. Stuart Baker in the second edition of the Fauna of British India included a subspecies cinnamomeum described by William Ruxton Davison from two specimens obtained by Atholl Macgregor, British Resident in Travancore, from an unknown location. This is usually not recognized but the description was based on two specimens with the black of the chin and lores replaced by dark brown. Stuart Baker used several genera for the south Indian laughingthrushes. Trochalopteron was said to have the nostril visible and not covered by overhanging bristles as in Ianthocincla, the genus in which the Wynaad laughingthrush was placed. Subsequent revision by Ripley and Ali lumped all the south Indian laughingthrushes into the single genus Garrulax. The genus splits were however been reinstated on the basis of differences in structure leading and the species was included in a previously erected genus Trochalopteron. A detailed phylogenetic study published in 2017 identified that the south Indian species that were included in Trochalopteron were best treated as a sister group of a clade that included Leiothrix, Minla, Heterophasia and Actinodura and they were not closely related to members of Trochalopteron in the strict sense. This led to a need to establish a new genus Montecincla (with the type species being the first described species, Montecincla cachinnans).
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