Cyornis tickelliae
Silhouette: L. Shyamal · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~40% in a week ~60%
Tickell's blue flycatcher (Cyornis tickelliae) is a small passerine bird in the flycatcher family. This is an insectivorous species which breeds in tropical Asia, from the Indian subcontinent eastwards to Bangladesh and western Myanmar. The Indochinese blue flycatcher was formerly considered conspecific. They are blue on the upperparts and the throat and breast are rufous. They are found in dense scrub to forest habitats. The name commemorates the wife of the British ornithologist Samuel Tickell who collected in India and Burma.
Tickell's blue flycatcher is about 11–12 cm long. It sits upright and forages mainly in the overgrowth. The male's upper parts are bright blue, its throat and breast are red, and the rest of the underparts are white. The female is duller blue with a brighter blue brow, shoulder, rump, and tail. It hybridizes with the pale-chinned blue flycatcher (Cyornis poliogenys) in the Eastern Ghats of India and these hybrids have sometimes been treated as a subspecies vernayi. The juvenile is streaked and has a spotted mantle, scaly brown upperparts, head and breast, with just the wings and tail being blue.
They have sometimes been known to feed even... Wikipedia →
Song1:01
India · 2025
© Jairam Vijayan · XC1043297 · CC BY-SA 4.0
Call0:39
India · 2022
© Sathyan Meppayur · XC741607 · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Song0:27
India · 2021
© [email protected] · XC825028 · CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
With luck
About 10% of wildlife watchers report a Tickell's Blue Flycatcher sighting in Sinharaja Forest Reserve on a given day, based on 217 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 71st most-seen of the 156 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 40%, and over a week to about 60%, if each day is a fresh chance.
May
In that month about 40% of wildlife watchers report a Tickell's Blue Flycatcher in Sinharaja Forest Reserve on a given day, against about 10% in March, July–August and October–January, the lowest months. That is one of Sinharaja Forest Reserve's wettest months, with about 460 mm of rain against 150 mm in March.
Between 4 and 7 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Tickell's Blue Flycatcher sightings with a recorded time, and about 6 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is most active around dawn and dusk.
14th of 27
Of the 27 parks where we can rate Tickell's Blue Flycatcher sightings, Sinharaja Forest Reserve ranks 14th at about 10%. The best odds are in Gir National Park (India, about 50%), Bandhavgarh National Park (India, about 50%) and Mudumalai National Park (India, about 50%). All parks ranked.
Same family: Muscicapidae
The closest relatives of the Tickell's Blue Flycatcher that you can see in Sinharaja Forest Reserve (family Muscicapidae, Old World Flycatchers, Robins, and Chats) are Brown-breasted Flycatcher (about 40%), Oriental Magpie-Robin (about 40%) and Asian Brown Flycatcher (about 20%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Tickell's Blue Flycatcher is recorded against all the birds logged in Sinharaja Forest Reserve (217 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
