Green-Billed Malkoha

When you are diligently searching for birds, competition and jealousy come naturally. Others always seem to be finding birds that you somehow missed. “It was singing perched on that branch all day yesterday” or “Mr. So-and-So who went with the same guide to that special spot found it right away” or “I swear it was on that field every day of last week” or “There are usually so many of them this time of year...” – but, when you go there, that bird is nowhere to be seen. As your heart sinks, comments like these evoke unkind feelings in even the most mild-mannered birder.

And so it happens that, on a familiar patch of Purbachol that I had scoured countless times, my birder friends run into a green-billed malkoha. Naturally, I am not with them at the time of this memorable incident. They are searching for a brahminy starling in a boroi tree when the malkoha unexpectedly emerges from behind the leaves and flies in all its green-billed glory. This could happen to anyone - others finding a bird he had missed. But what irks me is hearing about how close it came. It flew close enough to fill the frame of my friend's camera. How is that for a good luck surprise?

Now, what's the fuss, you ask? The birding field guides say that the green-billed malkoha is a common bird in Bangladesh. Well, it might be common, but for me it is not. I tried for a long time to get a good picture of it. I had chased it in many places. But the bojjat bird always managed to remain out of sight, hiding behind leaves and branches while showing me tantalizing glimpses of its tail or its head with the pale green beak – but never its whole body.

So, yes, I couldn't help feeling a bit jealous when I heard my friends tell this story.

But then luck rewarded me. One afternoon I followed a woodshrike – a small bird the size of a doel (magpie robin) - to a sajna tree at the edge of a farmer's vegetable patch. Movement in the next tree, a shirish, caught my eye. It was a larger bird, high up behind the leaves. I froze in place, waiting, and soon enough it showed itself to me: a green-billed malkoha!

For the next fifteen minutes it flew to several nearby trees, silently prowling the branches while it looked for food and allowing me a few photo opportunities.

The green-billed malkoha is a member of the cuckoo family. It is a native of several Asian countries starting in India stretching east through Bangladesh all the way to southeast Asia.

Its body is coloured in different shades of greyish green. It is about 50 cm. long with a patterned long tail. Perhaps its most startling feature is the patch of red skin around its eyes. It catches worms and insects from the leaves and branches while slowly traversing the branches of trees and bushes. It can be found in forests as well as village groves.

It is shy like other cuckoos, but in one respect it is different: it will not lay its eggs in the nest of other birds.

www.facebook.com/tangents.ikabir