The birds of South Asia include the species found in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives.
This is not only a huge geographical area, but has a range of habitats extending from deserts to rainforest, and from the world's highest mountains to coastal mangrove swamps.
These factors, coupled with the tropical climate, result in a large numbers of bird species, some 1300. As would be expected in the tropics, most of these, more than 1,000 species, are resident within the South Asia. The rest are mainly winter visitors from further north in Eurasia. Only eighteen species are purely summer visitors to the subcontinent.
141 species are endemic to the region, and 26 of these are endemic to Sri Lanka.
Status abbreviations:
- R = widespread resident
- r = very local resident
- W = widespread winter visitor
- w = sparse winter visitor
- P = widespread migrant
- p = sparse migrant
- V = vagrant or irregular visitor
- I = introduced resident
- Ex = Extinct
- C = critically endangered
- E = endangered
- V = vulnerable
- D = conservation dependent
- N = near threatened
Because of the large number of species, the lists are divided into four parts.
- part 1 Megapodes, Galliformes, Gruiformes and near passerines
- part 2 Remainder of non-passerines
- part 3 Passerines from pittas to cisticolas
- part 4 Passerines from Old World warblers to buntings
Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, birds, south and/or asia:
“I made a list of things I have
to remember and a list
of things I want to forget,
but I see they are the same list.”
—Linda Pastan (b. 1932)
“Do your children view themselves as successes or failures? Are they being encouraged to be inquisitive or passive? Are they afraid to challenge authority and to question assumptions? Do they feel comfortable adapting to change? Are they easily discouraged if they cannot arrive at a solution to a problem? The answers to those questions will give you a better appraisal of their education than any list of courses, grades, or test scores.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“The sun, the hero of every day, the impersonal old man that beams as brightly on death as on birth, came up every morning and raced across the blue dome and dipped into the sea of fire every evening. Water ran down hill and birds nested.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“To lib and die in Dixie!
Away, away, away down South in Dixie!”
—Daniel Decatur Emmett (1815–1904)
“I have no doubt that they lived pretty much the same sort of life in the Homeric age, for men have always thought more of eating than of fighting; then, as now, their minds ran chiefly on the “hot bread and sweet cakes;” and the fur and lumber trade is an old story to Asia and Europe.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)