Red-vented Bulbul (Pycnonotus cafer) [XC205815]
by Peter Boesman from Kuliou'ou trail, Oahu, Hawaii, United States (call)
Red-vented Bulbul (Pycnonotus cafer) [XC108905]
by Frank Lambert from Caqalai Island, Fiji (call)
Subspecies
Forms a superspecies with Sooty-headed Bulbul (Pycnonotus aurigaster) and sometimes treated as conspecific.
In north-western India, often hybridizes with Himalayan Bulbul (Pycnonotus leucogenys). Sometimes hybridizes also with White-eared Bulbul (Pycnonotus leucotis). Subspecies saturatus was invalidated (and replaced by wetmorei), as preoccupied by a subspecies of Andropadus latirostris, which was previously placed in present genus. Several described subspecies considered too weakly differentiated and therefore synonymized: thus, in India, primrosei (Assam) and afer (Meghalaya) are junior synonyms of bengalensis, and vicinus (Mysore) and pusillus (north-eastern Tamil Nadu) junior synonyms of nominate.
The following 11 subspecies are recognised:
intermedius Blyth, 1846 - Western Himalayas from Pakistan, Jammu and Kashmir eastern at least to Nepal.
humayuni Deignan, 1951 - South-eastern Pakistan (Sind) and north-western and north-central India (including northern plains).
bengalensis Blyth, 1845 - Central and eastern Himalayas and Gangetic Plain, and Bangladesh.
stanfordi Deignan, 1949 - North-eastern India (southern Assam hills), northern Myanmar and southern China (western Yunnan).
melanchimus Deignan, 1949 - Southern Myanmar and northern Thailand.
saturatus (Whistler and Kinnear, 1932) - North-eastern Peninsular India.
cafer (Linnaeus, 1766) - Southern India.
haemorrhousus (Gmelin, JF, 1789) - Sri Lanka.
wetmorei Deignan, 1960 - North-eastern peninsular India.
primrosei Deignan, 1949 - Southern Assam (southern of the Brahmaputra), Bangladesh and West Bengal.
pusillus Blyth, 1841 - Southern India (Bombay, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra to Kerala).