The Malabar trogon (''Harpactes fasciatus'') is a species of bird in the
trogon
The trogons and quetzals are birds in the order Trogoniformes which contains only one family, the Trogonidae. The family Trogonidae contains 46 species in seven genera. The fossil record of the trogons dates back 49 million years to the Early E ...
family. It is found in the forests of
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...
and peninsular India. In India it is mainly found in the
Western Ghats, hill forests of central India and in parts of the
Eastern Ghats
The Eastern Ghats are a discontinuous range of mountains along India's eastern coast. The Eastern Ghats pass through Odisha, Andhra Pradesh to Tamil Nadu in the south passing some parts of Karnataka as well as Telangana. They are eroded and cut ...
. They are insectivorous and although not migratory, may move seasonally in response to rain in hill forest regions. Like in other trogons, males and females vary in plumage. The birds utter low guttural calls that can be heard only at close quarters and the birds perch still on a branch under the forest canopy, often facing away from the viewer making them easy to miss despite their colourful plumage.
Description
![Malabar Trogon female](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Malabar_Trogon_female.jpg)
Like most other trogons, these birds are brightly coloured and
sexually dimorphic
Sexual dimorphism is the condition where the sexes of the same animal and/or plant species exhibit different morphological characteristics, particularly characteristics not directly involved in reproduction. The condition occurs in most ani ...
. The male has a slaty black head and breast with a white border to the black bib separating it from the crimson on the underside. The back is olive-brown to chestnut. The wing coverts are black with fine white vermiculations. They have 12 tail feathers that are graduated.
[ The central tail-feathers are chestnut with a black tip, with the second and third pairs from the middle having more black than chestnut. The outer three pairs have long white tips. The female lacks the contrasting black and crimson and has only a slightly darker head and breast that shades into the olive brown on the back while the crimson of the underside of the male is replaced by ochre. In both sexes, the beak is bluish as is the skin around the eye. The iris is dark brown and the feet are pale bluish.] The nostrils are covered by tufts of filoplumes. The feet are heterodactyl
In biology, dactyly is the arrangement of digits (fingers and toes) on the hands, feet, or sometimes wings of a tetrapod animal. It comes from the Greek word δακτυλος (''dáktylos'') = "finger".
Sometimes the ending "-dactylia" is use ...
, a feature unique to the trogons, with the digits I and II facing back and digits III and IV pointing forward. In most birds I, II and III face forward while IV faces back and in zygodactyly II and III face forward while I and IV face backwards.
Several populations have been named. The central Indian subspecies ''legerli'', named by Walter Norman Koelz
Walter Norman Koelz (September 11, 1895, Waterloo, Michigan – September 24, 1989) was an American zoologist and museum collector.
Walter Koelz's parents were immigrants from the Black Forest region of Germany, and his father was a village black ...
on the basis of a single specimen obtained from the foot of Mahendra Giri in Orissa is not always recognized, but said to be slightly larger, longer winged and brighter than ''malabaricus'' of the Western Ghats. The nominate race found in the central wet zone of Sri Lanka is smaller and the upperparts are brighter.[
]
Behaviour and ecology
These birds usually perch still, especially when alarmed and will sometimes clinging laterally to branches. When calling they sometimes raise and lower their tail. The call is a series of guttural or purring notes. The song of the male is a series of percussive calls. The breeding season in India is mainly February to May (before the Monsoon
A monsoon () is traditionally a seasonal reversing wind accompanied by corresponding changes in precipitation but is now used to describe seasonal changes in atmospheric circulation and precipitation associated with annual latitudinal oscil ...
s) while it is March to June in Sri Lanka.[
]
When they sit still, the appear hunched. The Hindi name used by hunters is and refers to the hunched neckless appearance as if dressed in a fakir's (robe). The Marathi name is while it is called in Kannada. In Kerala it is known as (literally "fire-crow"). In Sri Lanka, it is known as ''loha wannichcha''.
Malabar trogons feed exclusively on insect
Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs ...
s and fruits have not been noted in their diet unlike in the New World trogons.[ Seeds have however been reported in the diet of Sri Lankan specimens.][ In the forests of Sri Lanka, they are often found in ]mixed-species foraging flock
A mixed-species feeding flock, also termed a mixed-species foraging flock, mixed hunting party or informally bird wave, is a flock of usually insectivorous birds of different species that join each other and move together while foraging. These ar ...
s where they may sometimes be subject to kleptoparasitism
Kleptoparasitism (etymologically, parasitism by theft) is a form of feeding in which one animal deliberately takes food from another. The strategy is evolutionarily stable when stealing is less costly than direct feeding, which can mean when foo ...
by drongos. A study in Kerala found that they foraged mainly at 5 to 10 m with females tending to forage lower within the canopy. When foraging on bark, they propped themselves using their tail like woodpeckers, especially on decaying tree stumps. They sometimes descend to the ground and search for insects under leaf litter. They will sometimes fly and try to flush prey and then hover to pick up prey. They may also hang upside down to reach prey on vertical tree surfaces. Prey are often mashed or struck on a branch between the mandibles before feeding on them or prior to feeding young. The contact call is a series of about five low intensity while these were of higher intensity in territorial fights. The alarm call is a and a similar call is also delivered prior to roosting.[ Although their flight is fast, they are reluctant to fly. In the Nilgiri hills they are altitudinal migrants and are found in the higher reaches only during summer. ]
The nest is made in rotting trees or stumps that are easy to carve and pulverize using their bills. The male and female take turns to excavate the nest using their bills. It may take about a month to excavate the nest. The floor is made out of the wood powder and no extra lining is added. Two eggs were seen to be the normal clutch in a study in Kerala although older works suggest that the typical clutch is of three eggs. The eggs are laid with a gap of two days and incubated by both males and females with the females usually incubating at night. The incubation period is about 19 days. The hatchlings are fed mainly caterpillars for the initial period and later provided bugs, flies and orthopterans. The parents do not remove the excreta of the nestlings from the nest. The adults continue to feed the fledged juveniles for nearly 5 to 6 months. They are socially monogamous with pair bonds lasting more than a season.
Sri Lankan birds have been seen to plunge into water from an overhanging branch to bathe.
A species of endoparasitic cestode
Cestoda is a class of parasitic worms in the flatworm phylum (Platyhelminthes). Most of the species—and the best-known—are those in the subclass Eucestoda; they are ribbon-like worms as adults, known as tapeworms. Their bodies consist of man ...
, ''Triaenorhina burti'' has been described from the species.
Status
The species is becoming rarer in many parts of India and it is thought to be sensitive to forest fragmentation. Salim Ali
Sálim Moizuddin Abdul Ali (12 November 1896 – 20 June 1987) was an Indian ornithologist and naturalist. Sometimes referred to as the "''Birdman of India''", Salim Ali was the first Indian to conduct systematic bird surveys across Indi ...
noted it as being common in some areas of the Surat Dangs where it is now rare. One of his records is from Ajwa in Vadodara district which is believed to be a typographical error for Ahwa further south. Tickell collected specimens from Dampara in Dholbhum.
References
Other sources
* Inglis, CM (1944) The nesting of the Malabar Trogon. Jour. Bengal Nat. Hist. Soc. 18:101.
External links
Photographs, sounds and video
Encyclopedia of Life
{{Taxonbar, from=Q1274580
Malabar trogon
The Malabar trogon (''Harpactes fasciatus'') is a species of bird in the trogon family. It is found in the forests of Sri Lanka and peninsular India. In India it is mainly found in the Western Ghats, hill forests of central India and in parts of ...
Birds of India
Birds of South India
Birds of Sri Lanka
Malabar trogon
The Malabar trogon (''Harpactes fasciatus'') is a species of bird in the trogon family. It is found in the forests of Sri Lanka and peninsular India. In India it is mainly found in the Western Ghats, hill forests of central India and in parts of ...
Taxa named by Thomas Pennant