Chestnut-capped Babbler

I came across this furious Chestnut-capped Babbler while driving around my local patch yesterday morning. It was calling aggressively on the roadside next to a small canal. I slowly approached and flushed up a buttonquail, probably Barred Buttonquail. Then I found out that there was actually another bird nearby, so I guess they might be nesting somewhere in the bush. The other bird was generally silent. It only gave soft contact call once in a while, so I guess it might be the female.

This beautiful babbler used to be pretty scarce in the past but somehow managed to increase the population in the last few years. They can now be seen pretty much everywhere where there are some tall grass and a bit of water. Contrastingly, its relative Yellow-eyed Babbler, which used to be common, is now much scarcer. One of my hypotheses is that these 2 species might have been competing for the same habitat and the Chestnut-capped has done a better job in recent years, so the Yellow-eyeds are kinda wiped out, but who knows......