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India-wide Long-term Trend for White-browed Wagtail Estimated at −25%, While Recent Trend Was Uncertain

White-browed Wagtail at Ranganathittu Bird Sanctuary, India
Conservation · Population & status

The 2025 interim update from State of India’s Birds estimated a long-term decline for the white-browed wagtail (Motacilla maderaspatensis) across India, while the species’ more recent annual trend remained uncertain. The updated assessment uses citizen-science data from the eBird platform and was released as a new dataset in May 2026.

The national long-term trend was estimated at −25.1% and clearly supported a long-term decline. The current annual trend was estimated at −0.39% per year, but the uncertainty was large enough that the newer estimate did not show a clear increase or decline.

The update estimated the white-browed wagtail’s Indian distribution range at 2,085,424 km². State of India’s Birds describes the species as a resident, non-specialist bird endemic to the Indian subcontinent and retains it in the Low conservation-priority category.

The 2025 update revised numerical distribution and trend values for 942 previously assessed Indian bird species using approximately 48 million field observations uploaded to eBird through 31 May 2025. The trend values describe change in a reporting-based abundance index rather than direct counts of individual birds. Conservation-priority categories themselves were not recalculated in this interim release.

Sources and image credit

  1. State of India’s Birds Partnership. (2026). State of India’s Birds: Range, trends, and conservation status (Version 2) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20036633Primary 2026 dataset release created 6 May 2026. Version 2 updated the numerical distribution range size, long-term trend and current annual trend values for 942 previously evaluated species using approximately 48 million eBird observations through 31 May 2025; the assessment categories were unchanged.
  2. State of India’s Birds Partnership. (2025). State of India’s Birds factsheet: White-browed Wagtail (Motacilla maderaspatensis).Species page displaying the 2025 national update: long-term trend −25.12% (interval −32.60 to −17.20), current annual trend −0.39% (−1.06 to +0.28), distribution range size 2,085,424 km² (2,084,929–2,085,919), resident status, non-specialized habitat use, Indian Subcontinent endemicity, and Low conservation priority.

Image: Swardeepak (Sandeep Gangadharan) / Wikimedia Commons — white-browed wagtail at Ranganathittu Bird Sanctuary, Karnataka, India, 26 January 2017; cropped to 16:9. Representative image for this story; not presented as an animal or scene from the reported study or event. · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source

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