THE BENEVOLENT MOUNTAINS - II

November 2025

Malabar trogon / Harpactes fasciatus

Famous for its striking appearance and elusiveness; the word trogon is derived from the Greek word trōgōn, which means gnawing or nibbling, a reference to the way these birds excavate nest cavities; practises social monogamy (some species prefer serial monogamy, some practise polyandry/polygyny — in other words, avian love life can be complicated).

Harpactes is derived from the Greek word for robber; fasciatus is a Latin word meaning banded.

Indian white-eye / Zosterops palpebrosus

Sociable passerine birds that look like stuffed soft toys; love communal baths; also called chashmewala; sometimes seen stealing nest material from other birds’ nests.

Zosterops means girdle eyes in Greek; palpebrosus means prominent eyelids in Latin.

Little Spiderhunter / Arachnothera longirostra

A distinctive sunbird with a long, curved bill and tubular tongue which has a brush-like tip; aside from spiders and other insects, this long-billed bird feeds on nectar.

Arákhnēs means spider and thēras means hunter; longirostra is Latin for long-beaked.

Indian yellow tit / Machlolophus aplonotus

Also known as the Indian black-lored tit; has a prominent crest; the word tit is possibly a contraction of titmouse which means little bird.

Makhlos is Greek for luxuriant and lophos means crest; haploos means unadorned and notes means back.

Malabar pied hornbill / Anthracoceros coronatus

Both sexes have a casque above their bill; females have white orbital skin around the eye; ‘Near Threatened’ species that has been hunted for meat and folklore — some communities  believe that hanging a hornbill skull brings wealth; local names are dhanesh (master of wealth) or dhanchidiya.

Anthrax is Greek for coal black and kerōs means horn; coronatus is Latin for crowned.

White-rumped Shama / Copsychus malabaricus

A native of the Malabar region, this flycatcher was introduced to Hawaii and Taiwan for being a popular songster of the forest; emits distinctive whistles and fluty notes.

Copsychus is derived from the Greek for blackbird; malabaricus refers to the Malabar region.

Speckled piculet / Picumnus innominatus

One of the tiniest woodpeckers in India, tinier than a house sparrow; found across the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia.

Picumnus likely refers to its small size; innominatus means without a name.

Brown boobook / Ninox scutulata

The onomatopoeic name is derived from the distinctive ‘hoo-hoo’ call of the bird; also called Brown hawk-owl; it’s a ‘true owl’ or ‘typical owl’ (barn owls aren’t).

Ninox derives from Greek mythology about King Nisus, who was turned into a sea eagle; scutulata is Latin for ‘diamond-shaped’, a reference to the patterns in the bird's plumage. 

Plum-headed parakeet / Psittacula cyanocephala

Males have pinkish-purple head and a green body; females have a bluish-grey head; all parakeets are parrots but not all parrots are parakeets.

Psittacula is a diminutive of psittacus which means parrot; kuanos means dark blue and kephalos means headed.

Malabar Starling / Sturnia blythii

These noisy, gregarious pastel-coloured songbirds gather in flocks; related to mynas.

Genus name Sturnia comes from the Latin for starling; species blythii is named after British zoologist Edward Blyth.

Greater Flameback / Chrysocolaptes guttacristatus

Also called Greater goldenback, its tongue can be as long as the body; male has an all-red crown; female has an all-black crown speckled with white.

Chrysos is Greek for gold; kolaptes means chisel; guttacristatus refers to a spotted crest.

Bengal monitor / Varanus bengalensis

Can grow to nearly six feet; Tanaji is said to have used a pet monitor lizard to help him climb the walls of a fort; in mythology, Siva appeared as a golden monitor lizard (udumbu in Tamil) and therefore the deity is called Udumbeshwarar; hunted for meat and skin, which is used to make percussion instruments.

Varanus is the Latinization of the Arabic word waran which means lizard beast; Bengalensis refers to Bengal.

Winter in the Western Ghats

Birds can chirr, churr, chirp, chirrup, peep, cheep, tweet, twitter, trill, coo, caw, hiss, hoot, screech, squawk, cluck, cackle, shriek.

Some birds can even honk and laugh and scream and whistle. Great hornbills grunt and growl.

Out there far from the madding crowd, the dense untamed foliage emits a confounding miscellany of bird calls. It would take a remarkably discerning ear to tell one from another.

Our naturalist guide, Rajani Rao, can not only pick out many of the individual sounds, she can imitate several.

She catches a faint, squeaky ‘ti-ti-tsik-tsik’ sound and follows it to a particular branch. She signals to us to follow quietly, and then she points out a speckled piculet, one of the smallest woodpeckers in India.

There are none other of our fellow mammalian primates in sight, which is an equally rare event to relish.

Rajani leads us to another spot and listens again. There’s a series of yelps coming from under the canopy.

She uses her green laser pointer. “Look a little above the green point.”

Perched somewhere between the understory and overstory is the unmissable male Malabar trogon: flamboyant red belly, glossy black head, brown upperpart, with a white sash across the breast. The female, meditating a few branches below, is more soberly coloured.

Thus we discover, one after another, all the other birds and the five-foot monitor lizard with a tumescent tummy that was perched high up a tree. All creatures featured on this page were spotted over only two evenings and one morning — a total of five hours.

That’s how superabundant the Sahyadris — benevolent mountains — can be.

So far.

~*~