The Asian Fairy-bluebird, Irena puella, is a medium-sized, arboreal passerine

Passerine

A passerine is a bird of the order Passeriformes, which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds or, less accurately, as songbirds, the passerines form one of the most diverse terrestrial vertebrate orders: with over 5,000 identified species, it has roughly...

 bird

Bird

Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

.

This fairy-bluebird

Fairy-bluebird

The two fairy-bluebirds are small passerine bird species found in forests and plantations in tropical southern Asia and the Philippines. They are the sole members of the genus Irena and family Irenidae, and are related to the ioras and leafbirds.These are bulbul-like birds of open forest or thorn...

 is found in forests across tropical southern Asia from the Himalayan foothills, India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

 and Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...

 east through Indochina

Indochina

The Indochinese peninsula, is a region in Southeast Asia. It lies roughly southwest of China, and east of India. The name has its origins in the French, Indochine, as a combination of the names of "China" and "India", and was adopted when French colonizers in Vietnam began expanding their territory...

, the Greater Sundas and Palawan

Palawan

Palawan is an island province of the Philippines located in the MIMAROPA region or Region 4. Its capital is Puerto Princesa City, and it is the largest province in the country in terms of total area of jurisdiction. The islands of Palawan stretch from Mindoro in the northeast to Borneo in the...

 (Philippines

Philippines

The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...

). Two or three eggs are laid in a small cup nest in a tree. It was described by British ornithologist John Latham

John Latham (ornithologist)

John Latham was an English physician, naturalist and author. He was born at Eltham in Kent, and was the eldest son of John Latham, a surgeon there, and his mother was a descendant of the Sothebys, in Yorkshire....

 in 1790. The only other member of the genus and family is the Philippine Fairy-bluebird

Philippine Fairy-bluebird

The Philippine Fairy-bluebird is a species of bird in the Irenidae family. It is endemic to the Philippines.Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests and subtropical or tropical moist montane forests.-References:* BirdLife International 2004. . Downloaded on 26...

, I.