Last week I had our handyman Jess prune some branches from an old tree on the side of our front yard, which we’ve kept low and pruned so the morning sun can bless the small grass lawn past it.

In my life, I have seen many different species of bulbuls -- red-whiskered bulbul, red-vented bulbul, yellow-vented bulbul and streak-eared bulbul to name a few. All of them are beautiful birds.

South Asia is home to 24 different species of bulbuls, a family of songbirds for which a new genetic analysis shows an evolutionary history stretching back to the Southeast Asian archipelago and ...