Nature’s Master Seamstress
The Common Tailorbird
What makes the common tailorbird truly unique is exactly what gives it its name - it literally sews leaves together to build its nest.
Secondly, it is a year-round resident, non-migratory bird.
While other birds weave twigs, the tailorbird acts as a master seamstress, using its beak as a needle to craft a living cradle for its eggs.
Despite weighing only 6 to 10 grams it has an incredibly loud, repetitive cheeup-cheeup-cheeup call.
Another clue to identifying the bird is to just listen to its call – it sounds exactly like a tailor busy into stitching a piece of cloth! 😊
As usual, some vignettes for us all, on the Tailor Bird, from Salim Ali’s field notes in his Book of Indian Birds –
Size: Smaller than the Sparrow.
Field Characters: A small restless olive-green bird with whitish underparts, a rust coloured crown, and elongated middle feathers of the tail which is habitually cocked. Sexes alike. Singly or pairs, in shrubbery.
Distribution: Throughout the Indian Empire up to about 5,000 ft. in the Himalayas. Five races are recognised 011 size and depth of colouration.
Habits: This familiar little bird is equally at home in outlying scrub jungle or in gardens in the heart of a town.
While not found in actual desert, it is nevertheless present in small numbers in the arid tracts of N.-W. India, wherever there is any shrubbery, about villages and in the compounds of Dak Bungalows.
It is tame and confiding and will fearlessly enter the verandahs of occupied houses, hopping about on the ground with jauntily cocked tail, or among the creepers and potted plants within a few feet of the inmates. Its loud cheerful calls towit -, towit- towit or pretty-pretty-pretty, etc., are familiar sounds on the countryside.
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