The spiny babbler, locally known as Kande Bhyakur, Nepal’s only endemic bird species, has been recorded in Madhesh Province for the first time, marking a notable update in the country’s ornithological records.

The bird was spotted near the Dudhaura stream in Jitpur Simara Sub-Metropolitan City-22 of Bara district, with birdwatchers confirming it as the first verified sighting in the province.

Ornithologist Hathan Chaudhary, who identified the bird along with ornithologist Suraj Baral, said the sighting confirms the species’ distribution across all seven provinces of Nepal.

“We spotted four spiny babblers there,” Chaudhary said. “Records already exist from other provinces. This confirms its presence across all seven provinces.”

The bird was observed on June 4 at around 8:30 am in a forested area of the Chure range at an altitude of about 443 metres above sea level, east of the Mahendra Highway. The site falls under the Namuna Women Community Forest and features grassland and mixed scrubland with Chir pine, cutch and Indian rosewood trees.

Students from the Forestry programme at Hetauda Campus, including Ashish Panta, Sumi Singh Thakuri and Nischal Pokharel, also took part in the observation.

The Nepal Birdwatchers’ Association and the Mithila Wildlife Trust are jointly conducting bird surveys across all eight districts of Madhesh Province. Chaudhary said the spiny babbler was recorded during the ongoing survey.

A winter bird survey in Madhesh ran from mid-January to mid-March, while a second phase began on June 1.

The species has previously been recorded in Koshi, Bagmati, Gandaki, Lumbini, Karnali and Sudurpaschim provinces, but its presence in Madhesh had remained unconfirmed until now.

With the Bara record, the bird’s known distribution now spans all seven provinces.

The spiny babbler belongs to the Leiothrichidae family under the order Passeriformes and has been recorded at elevations of up to 1,830 metres in Nepal.

However, the Bara sighting is notable for being the lowest-altitude confirmed record of the species, according to ornithologist Manashant Ghimire.

The bird is recognisable by its curved black bill, brownish-grey plumage and white streaks extending from face to belly. Its loud, melodious call is often described as cuckoo-like.

It measures about 26 centimetres in length and typically nests in fern or grass vegetation in dense scrubland and rough forest habitats.

British naturalist Brian Houghton Hodgson first scientifically described the species in Nepal in 1836. It disappeared from scientific records for more than a century before being rediscovered by American ornithologist S. Dillon Ripley in the late 1940s near Rekcha village in present-day Karnali Province.

Ripley later documented the species in his 1952 book In Search of the Spiny Babbler. Since then, it has been regularly recorded across different parts of Nepal, according to senior ornithologist Hem Sagar Baral.