Funday Times

Funday Times

Stamp News 259 By Uncle Dee Cee
They thrive on both animal and vegetable food
The final set of bird stamps issued recently depict birds that belong to Omnivorous category. These birds feed on both animal and vegetable food. The Blue-faced Malkoha (also known as Kalaha Koha or Punchi Mal Koha) is the size of the common Mynah but with a long, much-graduated tail.

Its characteristic features are the pale-green beak, blue face, dark, greenish-gray feathers and long, white-tipped tail. It is found throughout the low country but it prefers the dry zone. It likes to be in thorny scrub jungle.. It has a clever way of threading its way through tangled foliage making it difficult to be spotted.

The breeding season appears to last almost throughout the year. Its nest is a flimsy one made out of twine and lined with green blades of grass and is placed in the middle of a small tree.

The Scimitar Babbler (De Demalichcha or Parandel-kurulla in Sinhala) is smaller and more slenderly built than the Common Babbler (Demalichcha). Its yellow short, curved beak, long white eyebrow and snowy shirt-front make it easy to recognise as one of the most attractive of our commoner birds. It is found in jungles almost everywhere and it loves forests, large or small. In fact, it lives wherever there is sufficient cover, say in estates and well-wooded gardens. It prefers to probe bark crevices, moss and bunches of dead leaves looking for insects. Living in pairs or family parties, they travel steadily through the forest often with other birds looking for food. Constantly they call each other in beautiful sonorous notes.

There are two breeding seasons - the main one in March to May and the other towards the end of the year. The nest is an untidy mass of grass-blades and dead leaves, lined with fibres and is placed among dense ferns close to the ground.

The Painted Patridge (Tith Wadu Kukula or Ussa-watuwa in Sinhala) is the size of a domestic pigeon but with short wings and tail, and a more round figure. It is seen only in the dry patana and park country of Uva in the foothills and mountains up to about 4,500 feet.

It loves hills covered with mana-grass and shrub. It loves to eat grass seeds and young grass roots as well as black ants, grasshoppers and termites. The nest is a shallow hollow in the ground under a bush or a grass tussock lined with a little grass. The breeding season is from the middle of June till September. It is feared that this bird is steadily decreasing in numbers.

The Red-backed Woodpecker (Pita-ratu Kerala), as the name suggests, has a bright red back and is larger than the Common Mynah in size. This species is the commonest woodpecker in Sri Lanka. It lives in pairs and moves up a tree in a series of jerky runs, which it quite often does from to bottom to top. Its flight consists of a series of bounds with its wings alternately flapping and closed. The male and female keep constantly in touch by uttering a loud rattling call.

The sound it makes is similar to a drumbeat when it is pecking the truck of a tree. It is a common bird everywhere in the low country, both in the wet and dry zones. Its favourite food is ants including the vicious red ants, whose large leaf-nets are broken into by the woodpecker to get at the larvae and pupae. For the breeding season from January to March and again in August, it makes a nest hole often in the truck of a coconut palm, from 15 to 30 feet from the ground.

The Malabar Ped Hornbill (Poru Kedetta) is a large bird the size of a hawk-eagle. Sexes are alike except that the female has the naked skin surrounding the eye white and no black patch on the posterior end of the head. It is easily identifiable by its enormous, covered beak, black and white feathers and distinctive cries. Generally found in flocks of four to six birds, they keep in touch with each other by making loud clanging and yelping calls.

These are louder in the evenings. It feeds mainly on wild fruit. It is found in isolated colonies throughout the low-country dry zone wherever there are extensive forests especially in belts of tall trees that line river banks.

The nest is in a hole in a big tree. The hen enters the cavity and then proceeds to wall up the entrance with a paste composed of her own droppings leaving only a narrow slit sufficient for her beak to pass through. The breeding season is from April to July. Two or three eggs are laid. They are white in colour.

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