Sitta castanea Nuthatch in Uttarakhand

Chestnut-bellied Nuthatch in Landour. Is this a Sitta castanea or a cinnamoventris?

The Chestnut-bellied Nuthatch (Sitta cinnamoventris) is a species of bird in the Sittidae family. It is found in the Indian Subcontinent. It is seen in Bhutan, India, Nepal, and Tibet.

Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical dry forests, subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests, and subtropical or tropical moist montane forests.

This species has been split by Rasmussen and Anderton (2005) from the Indian Nuthatch and Burmese Nuthatch. The Chestnut-bellied Nuthatch is very similar to the previous but with a heavier bill, crown and mantle of the same shade. The wing and tail markings show contrasting markings; silvery-edge to primaries, blackish inner webs to tertials and tail with large white spots in the tail. White on ear coverts does not extend into chin unlike in the former. Race almorae of Nepal and NW Himalayas has paler underparts; race koelzi of the eastern Himalayas has the female darker than in other races. Resident from Murree Hills to the Uttaranchal foothills extending to the Assam Valley, Arunachal Pradesh into the Lushai Hills.

Landour, a small cantonment town contiguous with Mussoorie, is about 35 km (22 mi) from the city of Dehradun in the northern state of Uttarakhand in India. The twin towns of Mussoorie and Landour, together, are a well-known British Raj-era hill station in northern India. Mussoorie-Landour was widely known as the "Queen of the Hills". The name Landour is drawn from Llanddowror, a village in Carmarthenshire in southwest Wales. During the Raj, it was common to give nostalgic English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish names to one's home (or even to British-founded towns), reflecting one's ethnicity. Names drawn from literary works were also common, as from those by Robert Burns, Walter Scott, Thomas Hardy, Robert Louis Stevenson and many others.Like Mussoorie and Dehradun, Landour has long been a center of secondary education. The towns have had several schools and "orphanages" for both European and mixed-race Anglo-Indian children since the mid-19th century. (Hint: "Orphanage" was often a Raj-era euphemism for a school for illegitimate mixed-race children). Also, there were many missionary-run schools, of which the most well-known was (and remains) Woodstock School, founded in 1854 for the children of American missionaries. Practically all of the other prominent schools including Wynberg-Allen School, St. George's School, Mussoorie Public School, Waverley Convent (now CJM) and Vincent Hill (now Guru Nanak 5th Centenary School) are in Mussoorie, not Landour. The Indian Army also runs a primary school in Landour Cantonment.Among natural features in the area, the local peaks are the most prominent. ('Tibba' is a local word for hill/peak). Other than "Old" Lal Tibba and Landour hill themselves (which lie within the Cantonment), there is the hunched, heavily forested Pari Tibba (also called Fairy Hill or Witches' Hill), lurking due south of Woodstock School and due east of Wynberg-Allen School. Once a private hunting estate of the ruling family of Tehri-Garhwal, it was not deforested for that very reason. It is also called Burnt Hill, referring to the unusual number of lightning strikes it has taken over the years, which has given rise to local superstitions and also helped keep it free of humans. The hill remains a popular hiking spot for the local boarding schools, but not having motorable roads is blessedly free of "tourism". Due north of Landour, 16 km (9.9 mi) away as the crow flies is Nag Tibba ('Serpent's Peak'), at 3,022 m (9,972 ft) the highest peak in the local region. It lends its name to the Nag Tibba Range, itself the next-northerly of the five folds of the Himalaya. To the east of Landour are Tope Tibba and the oddly shaped Pepperpot mountain; both are hiking destinations.

Source: Wikipedia

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