Clamorous Reed Warbler Acrocephalus stentoreus Scientific name definitions

The Clamorous Reed Warbler is widely but somewhat patchily distributed across Central and southern Asia, with a toehold in Africa, where it occurs in Egypt and Sudan, through the Nile Valley and at various desert oases, as well as along the Red Sea coast south to northern Somalia, thence across the southern Levant, Middle East, Central Asia, the Indian Subcontinent, and southwest China, before reappearing in insular South-East Asia, from Java and Borneo east to the westernmost Lesser Sundas. Further east and south, Acrocephalus stentoreus is replaced by the formerly conspecific Australian Reed Warbler (Acrocephalus australis). Over most of its range, Clamorous Reed Warbler is usually associated with freshwater marshes and wetland vegetation, sometimes also crop fields, but in places, including much of the Arabian Peninsula, as well as parts of the Indian Subcontinent, the species is tied to coastal mangrove formations. Acrocephalus stentoreus is very much a typical large reed warbler, boasting a rather conspicuous whitish supercilium within an otherwise somewhat understated face pattern, warm olive-brown upperparts and wing coverts, with rufous-tinged rump and uppertail ­coverts, and a brown tail. Below, the chin and throat are white, whilst the remainder of the underparts suffused warm buff. The sexes are alike, as in all Acrocephalus. Populations of the southern Levant include a rather distinctive dark morph. Clamorous Reed Warbler is mainly resident and probably largely sedentary across much of its broad distribution, but those populations breeding in Central Asia migrate to the Indian Subcontinent in winter (probably also reaching the Middle East in some numbers, and perhaps even northern Indochina), while the poorly known population breeding in parts of southwest China is also believed to be fully migratory, and presumably (also?) overwinters in mainland South-East Asia. Everywhere the species occurs it is perhaps most likely to draw attention by virtue of its powerful song, which is similar to that of other large reed warblers, and may be heard both at night and on the wintering grounds.