White-browed Tit-warbler (Leptopoecile sophiae) [XC657888]
by from Myk, Zaamin District, Jizzakh Region, Uzbekistan (call)
White-browed Tit-warbler (Leptopoecile sophiae) [XC657891]
by from Myk, Zaamin District, Jizzakh Region, Uzbekistan (begging call, call)
Subspecies
Subspecies divisible into two groups, one with relatively dark plumage (nominate and obscurus) and the other pale (major and stoliczkae). It has been suggested that the groups are separated ecologically, with the darker "nominate group” at higher elevations in relatively moist subalpine scrub and adjoining forest and the paler "stoliczkae group” confined to well-wooded arid montane terrain at lower altitudes (at least where the groups overlap). If this ecological separation were confirmed, the two groups would be best treated as separate species.
Nominate subspecies intergrades with obscurus in the north-eastern Qinghai and adjacent Gansu region of central China.
The following 4 subspecies are recognised:
sophiae Severtsov, 1873 - Mountains in south-eastern Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, north-western China (western Xinjiang, northern Gansu, eastern Qinghai)
and, in south, northern Pakistan (south to Baltistan) and north-western India (Ladakh).
obscurus Przewalski, 1887 - Southern and eastern fringes of Tibetan
Plateau from trans-Himalayan region of central Nepal (Dolpo), southern and SE
Xizang (Lhasa, Tsangpo Bend area) and southern and eastern Qinghai east to southern Gansu
and north-western Sichuan (south to Kangding).
major Menzbier, 1885 - Western China in western Xinjiang (upper
Tarim) and northern Qinghai.
stoliczkae (Hume, 1874) - Western China in southern Xinjiang, W
Qinghai and extreme western Xizang (upper R Indus).
BirdLife International Species Factsheet