Chestnut-headed Tesia

About the Chestnut-headed Tesia

The chestnut-headed tesia (Cettia castaneocoronata) is a small insectivorous songbird formerly of the "Old World warbler" family but nowadays placed in the bush warbler family (Cettiidae). It is found in Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Laos, Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand, and Vietnam. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forest and subtropical or tropical moist montane forest.

The chestnut-headed tesia was formally described by the English army officer and zoologist Edward Burton in 1836 under the binomial name Sylvia castaneocoronata. The specific epithet combines the Latin castaneus meaning "chestnut-coloured" and coronatus meaning "crowned". Formerly placed in the genus Tesia, a molecular phylogenetic study published in 2011 found that the chestnut-headed tesia was embedded in a clade containing members of the genus Cettia.

The phylogenetic relationships among the Cettia species are shown below, based on the data by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. It split from the Chestnut-crowned bush warbler about 5 million years ago. Three subspecies are recognised: C. c. castaneocoronata (Burton, 1836) – Himalayas and northeast... Wikipedia →