the beau - green - Coppersmith barbets !

You may have seen them on parks or on trees (fig trees!) nearer you – chirpy – their robust tuk-tuk-tuk sound could be heard from quite a distance too.  

 

Enthiran was a Science fiction based on novel beautifully written by Sujatha .. .. not sure whether its sequel Robo 2 starring Rajnikant, directed by Shankar will qualify as a Sci-fi !!

 

An unknown man hangs himself on a cell tower.  Meantime,  Dr. Vaseegaran builds an android humanoid assistant named Nila, [ "Nice, Intelligent, Loving Assistant"] after 8 years and introduces her to a group of college students. He tells them what she can do and remincises about Chitti, his previous creation which was dismantled after an error.  In the course of the movie, all the mobile phones in the city fly into the sky, creating utter chaos and panic. A council assembles to discuss the phenomenon, in which Vaseegaran suggests reactivating Chitti.  No cinema review this – but the main theme was cellular phones / more so, the towers are bad and not conducive to sparrows. 

 

Cellular phones are sort of most  essential accompaniments  to our lives and hence  cellular phone base stations are non-negotiable. They are not simply free standing towers but a balloon of invisible electromagnetic field with radiations – some say they threaten life around them, specifically of the birds, contending that -  as the radiation of cell phone towers increase, the bird population decreases.

 

Thala MS Dhoni is a legend .. .. he has lifted the T20WC and limited overs WC too . .. .. and many more for CSK  .. .. a couple of years back during pandemic there were photos and news item of Dhoni holding a small bird – a barbet !! 

 

In a post shared on Ziva's official Instagram account, MS Dhoni's wife Sakshi narrated how Ziva and her father MS Dhoni rescued and saved an injured bird at their farmhouse in Ranchi.  They saw this injured   coppersmith barbet   found lying unconscious by the 5-year-old in the lawn. Dhoni and Sakshi helped Ziva in feeding the injured bird some water and bringing her back to life. The coppersmith barbet flew off after healing, leaving Ziva with some great memories.

 

The cute little bird - coppersmith barbet is green with a red head, yellow cheeks and a yellow throat. Its underparts are streaked in grey and black. During the nesting season, the wear and tear on the feathers can cause the plumage of the upper back to appear bluish.

 

Philipp Ludwig Statius Müller (1725 – 1776) was a German zoologist.  A  professor of natural science at Erlangen, he published a German translation of Linnaeus's Natursystem. The supplement in 1776 contained the first scientific classification for a number of species, including the dugong, guanaco, potto, tricolored heron, umbrella cockatoo, red-vented cockatoo, and the enigmatic hoatzin.   Bucco haemacephalus was the scientific name proposed by Philipp Ludwig Statius Müller in 1776 for a barbet from the Philippines.  Molecular phylogenetic research of barbets revealed that Megalaima species form a clade, which also includes the fire-tufted barbet, the only species placed in the genus Psilopogon at the time. Asian barbets were therefore reclassified under Psilopogon, which is the older scientific name.

 

The coppersmith barbet (Psilopogon haemacephalus), also called crimson-breasted barbet and coppersmith, is an Asian barbet with crimson forehead and throat, known for its metronomic call that sounds similar to a coppersmith striking metal with a hammer. It is a resident bird in the Indian subcontinent and parts of Southeast Asia. It carves out holes inside a tree to build its nest. It is predominantly frugivorous, but has been observed eating insects, especially winged termites.

 

You may count the barbets on a fig tree nearer home in Triplicane !

 

With regards – S. Sampathkumar
17^th Oct 2022.