Mystery Of The Ashy Prinia

Bhuyanpara Range, Manas National Park

The little surprises in the wild; those delightful finds are always as awesome as meeting one’s expectations from a certain location for me. Being from Assam, I expected birds in Manas National Park. I didn’t expect the wonderful little ones that I caught there at all though. Right when you enter Bhuyanpara Range in Manas, you find yourself in this immense grassland area where I saw many interesting new birds including the famous and elusive Bengal Florican. The issue with that kind of landscape however is the apparent lack of perches for birds big and small. No way they’d perch close to the road usually out in open terrain with vehicles moving up and down. So the little ones perch too far for your focus to catch and there’s just none for big ones at all. Needless to say that I caught the Florican in flight and not perched just like everyone else does and sadly they aren’t post worthy shots. Oh ! How I wished for a few trees for him to sit on while I was following him through the lens.

I saw Ashy Prinias thrice or so here. The pictures here are from one of those sightings which worked the best for me cause incidentally he was close enough, brave and the light was just right. Little birds are so temperamental and I got lucky that he stuck around long enough close to the road. It was very interesting to see how different species of these little guys have their areas demarcated very well in the grasslands. In all my 3 trips into Bhuyanpara down the same road, it was always the same sequence of sightings in the grass going into the range. Siberian Stone Chat area, followed by Golden Headed Cisticola area, followed by these guys, the Ashy Prinia, after which the landscape changes and as more perches appear, the bigger guys like Babblers, Rollers and Coucals take over the areas adjacent to the road. When it gets even thicker, it’s Hornbill territory. That’s the story in April anyway.

Now these guys were unexpected cause with birds, I still know nothing till it’s done and I love it that way. These little grey, white and brown beauties are Warblers. They are also called Ashy Wren-Warblers, are like 14 cms long, weigh about 6 grams and are found pretty much around the sub continent in grasslands, woodland and farmlands. They stay close to the ground, just where I found them and that’s where they build their nests. Now unlike most passerines, these guys moult (change feathers) twice a year as opposed to just once. They do this in Spring and again at Autumn and it’s theorized that it’s done probably because of the presence of a high parasite load. Jury’s out on that one still cause no specific study has apparently been done to confirm that.

The parasite load and biannual moulting of the Ashy Prinia isn’t the oddest thing about them though. We sort of have an explanation there. What we can’t explain about these guys is an odd “electric sparks” kind of sound that they make when flying about. When it settles, you can hear its call which is very distinct and different. This mysterious sound has had bird guys guessing for ages. Some attribute it to their beaks, others to the beating of their wings while some say it’s the birds’ mandibles. Others have speculated that these birds snap their tails and some others say that their wings touch their tails during flight and this causes the sound. They’re little birds that fly faster than we can catch so we’ve pretty much named all the moving parts of the poor creatures in our guess work is my take cause we’re basically clueless even hundreds of years into it and nowhere near knowing where that electric buzzing comes from.

Well, what it does mean to me is that if I hear an electric spark out in the wild next time, I’ll know to shift to Shutter Priority cause I know now that these guys are around and they’re little and fast. The rest I’ll leave for some guy with an global shutter cam and a shotgun microphone working together to figure out.