Brown Breasted flycatcher

Description, Behavior, feeding and habitat

     The Brown-breasted Flycatcher or Layard's Flycatcher (Muscicapa muttui) is a small passerine bird in the flycatcher family Muscicapidae. The species breeds in north eastern India, central and Southern China and northern Burma and Thailand, and migrates to southern India and Sri Lanka.

     The Brown-breasted Flycatcher is 13–14 cm in length and weighs between 10-14 g. The overall colour of the upperparts is olive brown. Some of the feather shafts are darker. The upper tail coverts are brighter rufous as are the edges of the flight feathers. The tail feathers have rufous on the outer webs. The lores are pale and the eye ring is conspicuous. The chin and throat are white while the breast and sides of the body are pale brown. 

     The middle of the body to the vent is buffy white.Submoustachial stripes are faint but marke the boundary of the pale chin while the legs and lower mandible are pale flesh coloured.

     The most confusable species is the Brown Flycatcher but the more extensive rufous and distinctive patterns of this species make it easy to separate. It was named by Layard after Muttu, his servant who brought him the specimen.

     I loved watching this tiny beauty, while waiting for Blue-eared Kingfisher in Someshwara wildlife sanctuary, near Karkala, with my birding team, Shiva Shankar, Kartik Bhat, Ranganath Bhat, Prashanth Poojary, along with Shilpa Varadaraj and Kaushik Boloor, who were special guests to our birding event for that day. I am very sure, they had a great time watching birds, like the way we guys did, foraging and waiting in forests for hours together. Ultimately, its the Patience which mother nature gifts us, along with a priceless reward for patience, everytime in our birding trip. I am extremely thankful to all my birding friends for organizing such a wonderful birding event and I shall be every ready for future events too. Getting such stabilized images with my Canon EF 75-300mm iii lens, which neither has Image Stabilization, nor an Ultra-Sonic Motor (USM), is pretty much of a challenging task, during low-light birding in forests and I am happy that I am improving in my hobby..