Elusive warbler spotted in Ladakh after 46-year gap

Time of India

18-07-2025

Elusive warbler
At an elevation of 3,200 metres, Ladakh's rugged mountain sweep in the backdrop, a group of five sat huddled and listened intently to the 'click-clickclick' captured in a recording.
The insect-like call was proof that one of the most elusive bird species they had come looking for was there.
Visual proof came soon enough, making July 15 the day when a confirmed sighting of the long-billed bush warbler would be recorded after 46 years, in a thicket in Kargil's Suru Valley.
The last time the bird (Locustella Major) was seen was also in Ladakh in 1979, when a group of birders from Southampton University were on a tour (1977-80) to chronicle avian fauna.
Between 1979 and now, one more sighting of the longbilled bush warbler was documented when ornithologist James Eaton spotted it in Naltar Valley of GilgitBaltistan in 2023.
The current expedition by five birders – Harish Thangaraj, Lt Gen Bhupesh Goyal, Manjula Desai, Rigzin Nubu and Irfan Jeelani — was planned specifically to spot this warbler.
Team leader Thangaraj told
TOI
the group 'has years and years of experience sighting birds' and 'what we are now looking for are 'lost birds' – that were spotted decades ago but were never seen since'.
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This Feb, the group had made another expedition in search of the bird but failed to spot it. 'We searched in Gurez and Tulail valleys at altitudes between 2,400m and 2,800m. But it yielded no results, possibly because of altitude mismatch,' Thangaraj said, referring to the Gilgit-Baltistan sighting, which was at a higher reach.
After the unsuccessful attempt, the group stepped up research and got in touch with Eaton.
It was the Malaysia-based American ornithologist who steered them on the right path – in this case, near terraced fields surrounded by rumex and gooseberry shrubs at Sankoo in Suru. 'The bird was found in a willow amidst terraced fields. It's the first time it has been seen on a willow, which will now be added to its known habitats,' Thangaraj told TOI .
At 3,200 metres, this is also the highest recorded altitude at which the bird has been seen.
Classified as 'near threatened' by International Union for Conservation of Nature, long-billed bush warblers were commonly seen in Ladakh and GilgitBaltistan till the 1930s. In the decades since, birding expeditions were sparse. In 2015, Eaton wrote, birder Shashank Dalvi sighted two warblers in Suru, but it was too brief for him to take a picture.
'Expansion of settlements combined with climate change, could be pushing the birds to go higher,' Thangaraj said.
Pankaj Gupta, a Delhi Bird Society member who was not part of the expedition, said the 'rediscovery' of the bird is 'nothing short of extraordinary'. 'It reminds us how much remains hidden in our fragmented landscapes, and how urgent it is to protect these last remaining pockets of wilderness,' Gupta said.