The Bird That Sounds Like It Learned From a Music Teacher
The first time most people hear a Malabar Whistling Thrush, they look around for a person. The song is that convincing, a clear, unhurried series of melodic phrases that rise and fall like someone whistling a half-remembered tune on the way to school. That is exactly where the nickname comes from. British naturalists in colonial India, moving through the shola forests and rocky streams of the Western Ghats, kept hearing what sounded like a schoolboy whistling carelessly through his morning. The name stuck, and the bird has carried it ever since.
