The Siberian blue robin (''Larvivora cyane'') is a small

passerine A passerine () is any bird of the order Passeriformes (; from Latin 'sparrow' and '-shaped'), which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds, passerines are distinguished from other orders of birds by th ...

bird that was formerly classified as a member of the

thrush ''The Man from U.N.C.L.E.'' is an American spy fiction television series produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Television and first broadcast on NBC. The series follows secret agents, played by Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, who work for a secret ...

family, Turdidae, but is now more generally considered to belong to the Old World flycatcher family, Muscicapidae. It and similar small

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

an species are often called

chat Chat or chats may refer to: Communication * Conversation, particularly casual * Online chat, text message communication over the Internet in real-time * Synchronous conferencing, a formal term for online chat * SMS chat, a form of text messagin ...

s. Recent research suggests that this species and some other East Asian members of ''Luscinia'' should be classified in a new

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

, together with the

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

and Ryūkyū robins. The genus name ''Larvivora'' comes from the

new Latin New Latin (also called Neo-Latin or Modern Latin) is the revival of Literary Latin used in original, scholarly, and scientific works since about 1500. Modern scholarly and technical nomenclature, such as in zoological and botanical taxonomy ...

''larva'' meaning caterpillar and ''-vorus'' meaning eating (''vorace'' to devour), and ''cyane'' is

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

for "dark-blue". This bird is a migratory

insectivorous A robber fly eating a hoverfly An insectivore is a carnivorous animal or plant that eats insects. An alternative term is entomophage, which can also refer to the human practice of eating insects. The first vertebrate insectivores were ...

species breeding in the eastern

Palearctic The Palearctic or Palaearctic is the largest of the eight biogeographic realms of the Earth. It stretches across all of Eurasia north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa. The realm consists of several bioregions: the Euro-Sib ...

from Siberia and northern Mongolia,

northeastern China Northeast China or Northeastern China () is a geographical region of China, which is often referred to as "Manchuria" or "Inner Manchuria" by surrounding countries and the West. It usually corresponds specifically to the three provinces east of ...

, Korea and across to Japan. It winters in southern and south-eastern Asia and Indonesia. The breeding habitat is

conifer Conifers are a group of cone-bearing seed plants, a subset of gymnosperms. Scientifically, they make up the division Pinophyta (), also known as Coniferophyta () or Coniferae. The division contains a single extant class, Pinopsida. All ext ...

ous forest with dense undergrowth, often beside rivers or at woodland edges. It feeds on the ground but is very 'skulking'. In winter, this bird also tends to stay in dense vegetation. This species is larger than the

European robin The European robin (''Erithacus rubecula''), known simply as the robin or robin redbreast in Great Britain & Ireland, is a small insectivorous passerine bird that belongs to the chat subfamily of the Old World flycatcher family. About in len ...

. The breeding male is unmistakable with blue upperparts and white underparts. The female is much drabber, with brown upperparts and whitish underparts. Her dark eye stands out against the paler brown face. This species is a very rare

vagrant Vagrancy is the condition of homelessness without regular employment or income. Vagrants (also known as bums, vagabonds, rogues, tramps or drifters) usually live in poverty and support themselves by begging, scavenging, petty theft, temporar ...

, and has vagrant status even as far east as Pakistan. The Siberian blue robin was previously placed in the

Luscinia ''Luscinia '' is a genus of smallish passerine birds, containing the nightingales and relatives. Formerly classed as members of the thrush family Turdidae, they are now considered to be Old World flycatchers (Muscicapidae) of the chat subfamily ...

''. A large molecular phylogenetic study published in 2010 found that ''Luscinia'' was not monophyletic. The genus was therefore split and several species including the Siberian blue robin were moved to the reinstated genus ''

Larvivora ''Larvivora'' is a genus of small passerine birds belonging to the Old World flycatcher family Muscicapidae that occur in central and eastern Asia. The seven species in this genus were all previously placed in other genera. A large molecular phy ...

''.

References

External links

* * * Siberian blue robin Birds of Japan Birds of Korea Birds of Manchuria Birds of North Asia Siberian blue robin {{Muscicapidae-stub