Small Minivet - BirdForum Opus

Subspecies P. c. saturatus
Photo © by odewe
Jakarta, Indonesia, March 2005

Identification

Female
Photo © by jbpixels
Chom Thong district, Bangkok, Thailand, January 2020

16cm (6¼ in)
Male nominate

Female: grey upperparts, yellow underparts, tail edges, rump and wing patches.

Southern Asia from the Indian subcontinent east to Indonesia.

Male, Subspecies P. c. thai
Photo © by Oldnintheway
Queen Sirikit Park, Bangkok, Thailand, Feburary 2018

Subspecies P. c. peregrinus
Photo © by max1
Dudwha National Park , E. India, January 2018

There are 9 subspecies^[1]:

P. c. peregrinus: Himalayas and northern India
P. c. pallidus: Pakistan (Indus River valley from Rann of Kutch to Punjab)
P. c. malabaricus: West India (Western Ghats from Belgaum to Kerala)
P. c. cinnamomeus: South peninsula India and Sri Lanka
P. c. vividus: Andaman Islands
P. c. thai: Myanmar to northern Thailand and Laos
P. c. sacerdos: Cambodia and southern Vietnam
P. c. separatus: South Myanmar (Mergui District) and southern peninsula Thailand
P. c. saturatus: Java and Bali

Forests including mangrove and thorn. Strand woodland and casuarinas

They construct a cup shaped nest for their clutch of 2-4 spotted eggs. These are incubated by the female. They may be double-brooded in some areas.

Their diet consists of moths, caterpillars and other insects such as beetles and cicadas.

Clements, J. F., T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, D. Roberson, T. A. Fredericks, B. L. Sullivan, and C. L. Wood. 2017. The eBird/Clements checklist of birds of the world: v2017, with updates to August 2017. Downloaded from http://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/
Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive (retrieved Feb 2018)
Wikipedia

BirdForum Opus contributors. (2025) Small Minivet. In: BirdForum, the forum for wild birds and birding. Retrieved 3 May 2025 from https://www.birdforum.net/opus/Small_Minivet

GSearch checked for 2020 platform.