The magpie-robins or shamas (from ''shama'',

Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the w ...

and

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...

for ''C. malabaricus'') are medium-sized insectivorous birds (some also eat berries and other fruit) in the genus ''Copsychus''. They were formerly in the thrush family Turdidae, but are now treated as part of the

Old World flycatcher The Old World flycatchers are a large family, the Muscicapidae, of small passerine birds restricted to the Old World (Europe, Africa and Asia), with the exception of several vagrants and two species, Bluethroat (''Luscinia svecica)'' and Norther ...

family Muscicapidae. They are garden- and forest-dwelling species found in Africa and Asia. The genus ''Copsychus'' was introduced by the German naturalist

Johann Georg Wagler Johann Georg Wagler (28 March 1800 – 23 August 1832) was a German herpetologist and ornithologist. Wagler was assistant to Johann Baptist von Spix, and gave lectures in zoology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich after it was moved ...

in 1827. The

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specimen ...

was subsequently designated as the

Oriental magpie-robin The Oriental magpie-robin (''Copsychus saularis'') is a small passerine bird that was formerly classed as a member of the thrush family Turdidae, but now considered an Old World flycatcher. They are distinctive black and white birds with a lon ...

(''Copsychus saularis'') by the English zoologist

George Robert Gray George Robert Gray FRS (8 July 1808 – 6 May 1872) was an English zoologist and author, and head of the ornithological section of the British Museum, now the Natural History Museum, in London for forty-one years. He was the younger brother o ...

in 1840. The name ''Copsychus'' is from the

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

''kopsukhos'' or ''kopsikhos'', meaning "blackbird". The genus contains 13 species: The Seychelles magpie-robin is one of the most endangered birds in the world, with a population of less than 250, although this is a notable increase from just 16 in 1970.

References

* {{Muscicapidae-stub