About Terpsiphone paradisi (Linnaeus, 1758)
Adult Indian paradise flycatchers (Terpsiphone paradisi) are 19–22 cm (7.5–8.7 in) long. They have glossy black heads, complete with a black crown and crest, a round sturdy black bill, and black eyes. Females have rufous backs, with greyish throats and underparts; their wings measure 86–92 mm (3.4–3.6 in) long. Young males closely resemble females, but have black throats and blue-ringed eyes. As they mature into adults, they develop total body tail feathers up to 24 cm (9.4 in) long, with two central tail feathers growing into drooping streamers that reach up to 30 cm (12 in) long. Young males are rufous with short tails, and acquire their long tails in their second or third year. Adult males are either predominantly bright rufous on their upperparts, or predominantly white. Some specimens show varying degrees of intermediate patterning between the rufous and white forms. Long-tailed rufous individuals generally have no shaft streaks on their wing and tail feathers, while white individuals have black shaft streaks, and sometimes black edges on their wing and tail feathers. In the early 1960s, before Blyth's paradise flycatcher and Amur paradise flycatcher were recognized as separate species, researchers examined 680 long-tailed male specimens held in the collections of the British Museum of Natural History, Chicago Natural History Museum, Peabody Museum, Carnegie Museum, American Museum of Natural History, United States National Museum, and Royal Ontario Museum. The specimens came from almost the entire range of the species, though some areas were poorly represented. The relative frequency of rufous and white plumage types varies across geographic locations. Rufous individuals are rare in the extreme southeastern part of the species' range. Asymmetrically patterned intermediate individuals occur across the Indian area, and to a lesser extent in China. Intermediates are rare or absent across the rest of the species' range. Below is the recorded collection location breakdown of plumage types for long-tailed males: predominantly rufous with some white in wings and tail, collected in Turkestan, Kashmir, northern India, Punjab, Maharashtra, Sikkim, and Sri Lanka; predominantly rufous with some white in wings, collected in Iran, Afghanistan, Baluchistan, Punjab, Kashmir, northern and central India, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Bihar, and Nepal; predominantly rufous with some white in tail, collected in Punjab, northern and central India, Kolkata, Sri Lanka, and the Upper Yangtze Valley in China; predominantly white with some rufous in tail and wings, collected in Kashmir, Maharashtra, Sichuan, and North China; predominantly white with some rufous in tail, collected in Maharashtra and Fuzhou, China; predominantly white with a partly rufous back, collected in Punjab and Chennai; moulting from rufous into white plumage, collected in North Bihar. Three possible interpretations for this plumage variation have been proposed: males may be polymorphic for rufous and white plumage color; rufous individuals may be sub-adults; or there may be two sympatric species that are only distinguishable in the male sex. The Indian paradise flycatcher is a migratory bird that spends the winter in tropical Asia. In southern India and Sri Lanka, especially the highlands and western parts of Sri Lanka, both locally breeding populations and visiting migrant populations are present in winter. The breeding season of the Indian paradise flycatcher runs from May to July. The species is socially monogamous, and both males and females participate in nest-building, incubation, brooding, and feeding young. The incubation period lasts 14 to 16 days, and the nestling period lasts 9 to 12 days. Nests are sometimes built near a breeding pair of drongos, which drive away predators. The female lays up to four eggs in a neat cup-shaped nest built from twigs and spider webs at the end of a low branch. Two conflicting incubation timelines are recorded: chicks hatch after 14 to 16 days of incubation, and also after approximately 21 to 23 days. One documented case of interspecific feeding has been recorded, where Indian white-eyes fed Indian paradise flycatcher chicks.
