It has a loud three or four note call, feeds on fruits and small insects and perches conspicuously on trees.

The red-whiskered bulbul was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Lanius jocosus.

[4][5] Linnaeus specified the location as "China" but this was restricted to Hong Kong and Guangdong by Herbert Girton Deignan in 1948.

It has brown upper-parts and whitish underparts with buff flanks and a dark spur running onto the breast at shoulder level.

The tail is long and brown with white terminal feather tips, but the vent area is red.

The loud and evocative call is a sharp kink-a-joo (also transcribed as pettigrew or kick-pettigrew or pleased to meet you[15]) and the song is a scolding chatter.

[24] The red-whiskered bulbul was introduced by the Zoological and Acclimatization Society in 1880 to Sydney, became well established across the suburbs by 1920, and continued to spread slowly to around 100 km away.

In Florida they feed on fruits and berries of as many as 24 exotic plants including loquat (Eriobotrya japonica), Lantana spp., Brazilian pepper (Schinus terebinthifolius) and figs (Ficus).

[27] Populations of the red-whiskered bulbul on the island of Réunion have diversified in the course of thirty years and show visible variations in bill morphology according to the food resources that they have adapted to utilize.

It is woven of fine twigs, roots, and grasses, and embellished with large objects such as bark strips, paper, or plastic bags.

[34][35] The red-whiskered bulbul feeds on fruits (including those of the yellow oleander that are toxic to mammals), nectar and insects.