Meet the Rarely Spotted Fire Crow and the Tit of the Tropics 💚💚💚

Meet the Rarely Spotted Fire Crow and the Tit of the Tropics!

Well, our Nature Walk today was quite ecstatic by all means!

For any many reasons at that!

#intothewildwithrufus

On the Elephant Corridor! 😊

Our vibrant team of birders started well before sunrise, in what birders would call the “Blue Hour,” when the atmosphere around us was still, the air was hush and cool, and the world felt really private! 😊

The time of the day, when you can’t indulge in eye-birding, but ‘ear-birding’, listening to the dawn chorus of our feathered friends, and trying our best to identify each of the birds by their sounds, before we could set our eyes on them during the “Golden Hour.” 😊

[Well, before that, on an aside, let me give a few suggestions on the attire that’s expected of birders. Choose clothing that keeps you comfortable, but at the same time keeps you quite invisible. Also, choose clothing that’s got ‘Habitat Blending’ colours, that are more earthy and natural in their tones – like khaki, tan, olive green, grey, and brown. And yes, avoid white and red by all means please].

Yes! After the blue hour, cometh the golden hour, when the sun peeps out of the horizon! This is the time when the insects start moving, triggering a rush of activity among the insectivorous birds.

This is the time, when it’s advisable to stand ‘still’ for minutes, and become part of the landscape, to pay attention to the birds.

One good clue when you watch out for birds, is to note that ‘odd shiver’ or the ‘strange shake’ of a leaf – something that’s so strikingly unusual when it comes to the stillness of the entire branch! 😊

Today, during one such ‘still’ness, we were able to get the blessed darshan of two rare birds, or rather shy birds, that usually don’t forage into the clearings or the open woodlands like many others of their ilk.

The first one is the Asian Tit, or the Grey Tit, an elusive resident bird, that’s been eluding us for many many many months now.

What an ‘active’ bird! Doesn’t believe in the policy of ‘sitting still’ at one place for even a jiffy! 😊

It was very quick in its movements, that it proved a real challenge to capture it on our cameras. Which we ultimately did, though! 😊

Yet another uniqueness of the Asian Tit is its ‘foraging intelligence’ that makes its sighting a real joy to observe during a nature walk.

They usually inhabit tree hollows, (like the one we had videoed while on our bird walk today) where both parents are known to stay with their eggs! And quite interestingly, they emit a loud, snake-like hissing sound from inside the dark cavity to scare off potential predators. You may want to watch that YouTube video on our Vlog HERE.

Also called the ‘Tits of the Tropics’, the Asian Tit is known for using their feet like hands to hold down large insects or caterpillars while they tear them apart with their beaks. Also, when dealing with hard seeds, they wedge the seed into a crevice in tree bark and use their beak like a hammer to crack it open.

Curiously, when I looked up Salim Ali’s famous Book of Indian Birds, of the 1940s, he refers to the Asian Tit as the ‘Grey Tit.’

In Malayalam, the bird is most commonly called ചാരമരപ്പൊട്ടൻ (Chara Marappottan), which translates to “Grey Tree-borer” referring to its habit of hopping along branches and pecking at bark to find insects.

In Tamil, the Asian Tit (or Grey Tit) is most commonly called the சாம்பல் சிட்டு (Saambal Chittu) which again connotes to mean “Ash” or “Grey”, referring to its distinctive ashy-grey back.

சிட்டு (Chittu) means “Small bird” or “Sparrow-like bird”.

While the term ‘Grey Tit’ holds good even today, ornithologists now have a preference for the name Cinereous Tit, wherein “cinereous” in Latin means “ash-grey.” Hence, it’s better to use the terms “Cinereous Tit” or “Asian Tit”, they say.

The second surprise for the day was the sighting of the Malabar Trogon, a bird that’s often considered the ‘Holy Grail’ for birdwatchers of the Western Ghats.

I should admit that, this was my first spotting of the Malabar Trogon in any many years of birding. 😊

In Malayalam, the Malabar Trogon is known by the beautiful name, തീക്കാക്ക (Theekkaka), which would translate to mean, “Fire” “Crow”, which captures the brilliant, glowing crimson-red breast of the male, which looks like a flickering flame amidst the dark, shaded canopy of the forests.

Tamil too, sports a similar name - தீக்காக்கை (thee-kaakkai), just like its Malayalam counterpart!

A bird of such incredible beauty, the Malabar Trogon is quite shy by nature, and has a preference for deep, shaded forests.

In one of his memorable BBC nature documentaries, Sir David Attenborough had referred to them as “living fossils”.

That’s because they belong to an ancient order of birds of over 49 million years ago, that has remained relatively unchanged for all these eons. Added, they are the only birds in the world with heterodactyl feet - where the first and second toes point backward, while the third and fourth point forward. This makes them exceptionally stable when perched on thin, horizontal branches in the forest.

Apologies for being a bit sexist here, but yes, the male looks more beautiful than the female – like they usually do in the bird species! 😊 In fact, the male and the female of the Malabar Trogon are strikingly different! While the male features a dazzling crimson-red underbelly, the female has a olive-orange belly with a brown head. We couldn’t take a better picture of the male! So giving you the rare snaps we had taken today.

However, we were thanking heavens full-throttle for having enabled us to spot an ‘incredibly hard to spot bird’ of the wild frontiers of the Western Ghats.

PS: All photos © this blogger’s! 😊But can be used free of cost, by all ye fellow birders from across the world. If you want a clearer snap with the original 6000x4000 pixels, please DM or email me at rufus@mcc.edu.in

Shall send them to you absolutely free – for the sheer joy of birding! ❤️