Barbets of India: Send in the Clowns

Over forty years ago, I trained my pair of brand-new 10X50 binoculars on the first bird I spotted on the peepul tree outside our fourth-floor flat in Mumbai. I was transfixed. It was a dumpy little fellow, sparrow-sized and clad in forest green, with a streaky white front and a face and head like a clown’s: crimson, yellow, and black, with huge dark soulful eyes. It seemed to be standing on tiptoe, first facing one direction and then another and hiccupping away, “tok-tok-tok”. Wow! I thought, a lottery early in the morning! And if the first bird I seriously looked at was dressed like a clown, what did the other approximately 1,300 species in India look like?

That little coppersmith barbet or crimson-breasted barbet (Psilopogon haemacephaulus), all of 17 cm, and a member of the barbet family (with nine species in India) was responsible for much that followed in my birdwatching journey. To my delight, I discovered that among the barbet clan, there were several kaleidoscopic-headed clowns, some of whom, sadly, I still haven’t met. All have forest green plumage, which merges beautifully into their arboreal habitats. By and large, they are stocky, stumpy-tailed birds with wiry bristles around their bills. They live and hide in the canopy and are often difficult to winkle out. It’s far easier to listen to their calls. 

The blue-throated barbet (Psilopogon asiaticus), close cousin of the coppersmith barbet, lives in the Himalayas but is also happy to dwell in Kolkata. It is 23 cm, has a vivid turquoise throat and face, and is topped with a yellow and crimson crown. The blue-eared barbet (Psilopogon cyanotis), just 17 cm long, has a head of light and dark blue, with red and yellow patterns to embellish it and blue ear coverts. It is a resident of the Northeast.

The golden-throated barbet (Psilopogon franklin), a 23 cm bird, has a yellow-orange throat patch and wears a black pirate’s eyepatch and vivid green plumage. It prefers playing statues at the tops of trees in the forests of the Northeast to avoid the paparazzi.

White-cheeked barbets (Psilopogon viridis), also the same size, have white streaks above and below the eyes and a white-streaked neck and head. They are residents of the Western Ghats, some also inhabiting the southern Eastern Ghats. They are also common all over South India, including in cities like Bangalore.

The Malabar barbet (Megalaima malabarica), smaller, at 17 cm, is another clown-faced green barbet, with crimson, black and blue on its head. It is endemic to the Western Ghats.

In the foothills of Himachal and Uttarakhand, and in Jharkhand and the Northeast, lives the lineated barbet (Psilopogon lineatus). It is larger, at 28 cm, bright green with a streaked grey and brown head and pink bill. It doesn’t mind posing atop bare branches.

Perhaps the most familiar member of the barbet family is the brown-headed barbet (Psilopogon zeylanicus). In cities like Delhi, it heralds the onset of summer with its ringing “kutroo-kutroo-kutroo” calls, which are so welcome at the end of winter. It’s a green oafish-looking bird with a grinning, yellow-ochre face, and stout yellow-brown bill. It will always get a smile out of you! Thanks to ample tree cover, this bird and the little coppersmith barbet appear to have done exceedingly well in Delhi. It will be prudent not to bring down dead trees — if they don’t pose a hazard — so that these harbingers of summer (and so many others that have apartments in holes and hollows) can continue to live there.

Completing the roll call is the completely wacky great barbet (Psilipogon virens), the heftiest of the clan at 33 cm and sporting a big violet blue head, crimson vent, brown breast and mantle, along with a whopping big yellow bill. It lives in the Himalayas, stretching from west to east, hiding in forest trees. When in love (or claiming property), it will let out a ringing, wailing call, “pillu-pillu-pillu”, that echoes across the mountain valleys. One bird I heard calling in Kasauli, I was convinced, could be heard all the way in Shimla! Especially when heard early in the morning, there is a lovelorn loneliness to its call.

Barbets generally breed in summer (some starting as early as November in areas where it is not cold, extending until August). They excavate holes in the trunks or branches of rotting trees (and even termite mounds) or take over property vacated by woodpeckers. It is wonderful to see a coppersmith hard at work and astonishing how completely round their finished hole is. Cleverly, the bird often excavates its shaft (25-80 cm long before opening into the egg chamber) on the underside of a branch to escape detection. This means the tunnel must have a dogleg (bend) somewhere inside if its 2-5 dull white eggs are not to fall out! The barbet clan is largely frugivorous; they love fruits, berries, and drupes of all kinds, boosting their diet with insects which they try to (rather clumsily) catch on the wing. Flying is not one of their strong points. They flap furiously, then glide and dip rather in the manner of woodpeckers. They are invaluable for seed dispersal in the forests — and the peepul tree, for one, is probably indebted to them. They hang out alone or in pairs (often duetting) but will have a clan gathering if a particular tree is in fruit and it’s party time. Some are accused of wasting more (fruit) than they eat, but who are we to point fingers here?

Fortunately, none of the species appears in the IUCN’s depressing Red List, and all are of “Least Concern”. However, with increasing deforestation and “development” in the hills and mountains, it remains to be seen for how long.

If you’ve shivered through a grim Delhi winter and you hear the “kutroo-kutroo-kutroo” calls of the brown-headed barbet, or the “tuk-tu-tuk” hiccups of the coppersmith one morning, you know that the clowns have arrived, and spring is around the corner with summer hot on its heels.