Bulbul means nightingale in Persian—but not in English birding
Bulbuls belong to Pycnonotidae, medium passerines that also include greenbuls, brownbuls, leafloves and bristlebills. George Robert Gray named the group in 1840 as a thrush subfamily. Persian bulbul can mean nightingale; English bulbul points to this family instead.
The family now counts 161 species in 28 genera, spread across most of Africa, the Middle East and tropical Asia to Indonesia, with outliers north to Japan and on Indian Ocean islands. African species mostly live in rainforest, while Asian bulbuls favour more open country. Genetics splits the family into two main branches: one purely African, full of birds called greenbuls, and one mostly Asian with a few African members.
The family tree has been redrawn repeatedly. Some Malagasy birds once filed here now belong to a separate family, and the three African nicators got a family of their own. A 2007 study by Ulf Johansson and colleagues found the genus Andropadus was not a natural group, leaving only the sombre greenbul in it, and a 2017 study by Subir Shakya and Frederick Sheldon broke up the sprawling genus Pycnonotus into several deeply separate lineages. A new genus, Nok, was created in 2017 for the bare-faced bulbul.
Bulbuls are slender, short-necked birds with long tails, short rounded wings and slightly hooked bills. They range from the tiny greenbul, about 13 centimetres and 13 grams, to the straw-headed bulbul at 29 centimetres and 93 grams. Most wear drab olive-brown to black plumage, though some flash yellow, red or orange patches, and many sport crests or bright eye-rings. They are noisy, with nasal or gravelly calls; one writer called the brown-eared bulbul's song among the most unattractive sounds any bird makes.
Most pair for life, though the yellow-whiskered greenbul appears to court at communal display grounds, and in some species older offspring help raise siblings. Females incubate up to five eggs for 11 to 14 days. Diets run from fruit, the mainstay, to nectar, insects and small vertebrates. Red-whiskered and red-vented bulbuls, trapped heavily for the pet trade, now live wild in Florida, Fiji, Australia and Hawaii. Around 13 species, mostly forest specialists, are threatened.
Source: Bulbul
