According to the Birds of the Middle East (3rd ed.), the native range of White-eared Bulbul (Pycnonotus leucotis) is from Iraq, Iran, to northwestern India but that it has been widely introduced across the Arabian Peninsula with these introduced populations expanding into new regions since. My first encounter with White-eared Bulbuls was in the UAE, where it's a common and conspicuous resident of date plantations, parks, and gardens throughout the country, so common that it became habitual to gloss over them, along with Common Myna and House Sparrow, when compiling, say, an eBird checklist after a birding excursion.
When I moved to eastern Saudi Arabia in 2017 and began encountering White-eared Bulbuls around where I was living in the Al Ahsa region, I enjoyed their presence, particularly the lively bubbling of their calls in the morning, but didn't think much about them otherwise, assuming that, like the birds in the UAE, these were part of an introduced population. For that reason, despite birding around Al Ahsa for almost five years, I don't have any images of these birds. My only media is one audio file from the Al Ahsa National Park.
It was only after leaving eastern Saudi for good in 2022 that I subsequently learned that there are two recognized subspecies of White-eared Bulbul occuring in the country and one putative subspecies, not widely recognized, originating from the date palm plantations of the Al Ahsa region. The fact that locally endemic subspecies of Graceful Prinia (Prinia gracilis hufufae) and House Sparrow (Passer domesticus hufufae) had also been described from this region, known for having been a site of human habitation and extensive cultivation for millenia, the world's largest oasis, it stands to reason the "Bulbul Hassawi", as it is known locally, might also be endemic.
Currently, Cornell's Birds of the World recognizes only two subspecies of White-eared Bulbul—P. l. leucotis, from southeastern Iran through northwestern India, and P. l. mesopotamiae, from the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys in Iraq and southwestern Iran across northern Iran. The main differences between the two are size, with the former smaller than the latter, the darkness of the underparts, with the former lighter than the latter, and the presence or absence of a yellow eyelid, a signature feature of the latter. The images below illustrate the key features for separating the two recognized subspecies, with P. l. leucotis above and P. l. mesopotamiae below. The birds of the northeastern Saudi Arabia and Bahrain were thought to have been introduced much earlier than other populations on the Arabian Peninsula and/or are part of a natural expansion of the latter from southern Iraq through Kuwait, whereas birds from central and northwest Arabia have originated largely from introduced populations of the former subspecies, likely exclusively through the caged bird trade.
A survey of images from Saudi Arabia bears the above out, supposing that indeed we're talking about only two subspecies, neither native to the country. The images from the Macaulay Library below are from the eastern region of Saudi and Bahrain. Note the obvious yellow eyelids on these birds. This is the most readily noticed feature for P. l. mesopotamiae.
The next set of images are from the central region around Riyadh as well as northwestern populations around Tabuk and Al Jawf. Note the absence of yellow eyelids. This feature indicates that these birds belong to the nominate eastern subspecies (P. l. leucotis).
The argument for the recognition of a third subspecies (P. l. dactylus) in the Al Ahsa region was based on the fact that these birds matched the Mesopotamian birds in terms of size and the presence of yellow eyelids but were much lighter on their underparts, more in line with the nominate subspecies further to the east (Ripley 1951). Unfortunately, there are no good images in Macaulay Library from this region to compare. As mentioned, this proposed taxon is no longer recognized. Clements synonymized P. l. dactylus with P. l. mesopotamiae in the 2024 update. Images of P. l. mesopotamiae from Iraq and Iran show variability in terms of the relative darkness and cleanness of the underparts, like this bird from Tehran, which is quite pale and unmarked below.
I am not aware of any further studies on the viability of the "bulbul hassawi" (P. l . dactylus), but belatedly learning about the different subspecies of White-eared Bulbul in the eastern region and the possibility there may, in fact, be a locally endemic subspecies is a lesson in why we shouldn't take common species for granted. Across the Middle East, there are ornithological queries still to be explored and intriguing natural histories still to be written. Next time I make it back to Al Ahsa I look forward to looking upon the White-eared Bulbuls with new eyes and new appreciation.
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