Bird watching in Thailand - Coppersmith Barbet

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Coppersmith Barbet, Psilopogon haemacephalus, นกตีทอง

The coppersmith barbet, crimson-breasted barbet or coppersmith (Psilopogon haemacephalus), is a bird with crimson forehead and throat which is best known for its metronomic call that has been likened to a coppersmith striking metal with a hammer.

It is a resident found in the Indian subcontinent and parts of Southeast Asia. Like other barbets, they chisel out a hole inside a tree to build their nest. They are mainly fruit eating but will take sometimes insects, especially winged termites.

Habitat and distribution
Throughout their wide range they are found in gardens, groves and sparse woodland. Habitats with trees having dead wood suitable for excavation is said to be important. Birds nest and roost in cavities.

In the Palni Hills of southern India it is said to occur below 4000 feet. In the Himalayas it is found mainly in the valleys of the outer Himalayas up to 3000 feet. They are rare in the dry desert zones and the very wet forests.

Range map from www.oiseaux.net - Ornithological Portal Oiseaux.net

www.oiseaux.net is one of those MUST visit pages if you're in to bird watching. You can find just about everything there

Description
This species of barbet is found to overlap in range with several larger barbets in most of South Asia. In the Western Ghats, it partly overlaps with the Malabar barbet which is of a very similar size but having a more rapid call.

The red forehead, yellow eye-ring and throat patch with streaked underside and green upperparts, it is fairly distinctive. Juveniles are duller and lack the red patches. The sexes are alike. The Sri Lankan form has more black on the face, more red on the breast and darker streaks on the underside.

During the nesting season, the wear and tear on the feathers can cause the plumage of the upper back to appear bluish.

Suan Rot Fai/ Queen Sirikit Park, Bangkok
- March 2018 -

Coppersmith Barbet - Baby waiting for mommy and daddy to come home with food

Juvenile Coppersmith Barbet without the red

Coppersmith Barbet - Baby waiting for mommy and daddy to come home with food

Juvenile Coppersmith Barbet without the red

Coppersmith Barbet - Baby waiting for mommy and daddy to come home with food

Juvenile Coppersmith Barbet without the red

Coppersmith Barbet - Coming home with the mouthful of goodies for the baby

Within the Old World barbets in their genus, they are found to be basal in phylogenetic analyses. Most of the remaining Asian species are more recent in their divergence and speciation.

About nine subspecies are well recognized.

• nominate haemacephala (P. L. S. Müller, 1776) is found in the Islands of the Luzon and Mindoro in the Philippines

•indica (Latham, 1790) is found in the Indian subcontinent form northeastern Pakistan and extends into Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Several former supspecies from India are synonymized into indica. The remaining are island populations in Southeast Asia

•delica (Parrot, 1907) Sumatra

•rosea (Dumont, 1816) Java

•homochroa Dziadosz & Parkes, 1984 from Tablas

•celestinoi Gilliard, 1949 from Catanduanes, Biliran, Samar, Leyte

•intermedia (Shelley, 1891) from Panay, Guimaras, Negros

•cebuensis Dziadosz & Parkes, 1984 from Cebu

•mindanensis Rand, 1948 from Mindanao

Behaviour and ecology
Keeps solitary, pairs, or small groups; larger parties occasionally on abundantly fruiting Ficus trees. Fond of sunning themselves in the morning on bare top branches of tall trees, often flitting about to sit next to each other. The flight is straight, with rapid flaps.

They compete with other cavity nesting birds and frugivores. Psilopogon asiatica have been noted to evict them from their nest holes, while red-vented bulbuls have been seen to indulge in kleptoparasitism, robbing the male of berries brought to the female at the nest.

The nest holes are also used for roosting and some birds roost alone in cavities and these often roost during part of the day. Immatures will roost with the parents but often return to roost early so as not to be prevented by the parents from entering the roost cavity.

Listen to the Coppersmith Barbet

Sound from www.xeno-canto.org

Vocalization
The call is a loud rather metallic tuk…tuk…tuk (or tunk), reminiscent of a copper sheet being beaten, giving the bird its name. Repeated monotonously for long periods, starting with a subdued tuk and building up to an even volume and tempo, the latter varying from 108 to 121 per minute and can continue with as many as 204 notes. They are silent and do not call in winter.

The beak remains shut during each call - a patch of bare skin on both sides of the throat inflates and collapses with each tuk like a rubber bulb and the head is bobbed.

Here we can see how a Coppersmith Barbet looks like when calling. Closed bill

Suan Rot Fai, Bangkok - February 2016

And here we can see a Coppersmith Barbet singing/ calling
Video quality leaves a whole lot to wish for

Suan Rot Fai/ Queen Sirikit Park, Bangkok - March 2018

Canon EOS 5D

Not the most expensive camera you can buy, but I'm disappointed with the video function. When I bought the camera I could not care less about the video function. I never thought that I would take any videos. But well, here we are. No AUTO FOCUS when you take video and my cheap 700 € Canon PowerShot G7X have AUTO FOCUS when I take video.

My Canon EOS 5D is kind of heavy and I cannot look through the viewfinder eyepiece. Trying to look on the LCD monitor and at the same time trying to set the focus manually by turning the lens. Yes, as you can see on the Coppersmith Barbet video above it is not good.

We can see that the Canon PowerShot G7X
is fully automatic when taking videos

Well, I have a belt pouch for my Canon PowerShot G7X so we will look forward tohopefully much better bird videos in the future. So keep your eyes out for new Birding News videos.

Diet
Prefers banyan, peepul, and other wild figs, various drupes and berries, and the occasional insect, caught in aerial sallies. Petals of flowers may also be included in their diet. They eat nearly 1.5 to nearly 3 times their body weight in berries each day.

Breeding
Courtship involves singing, puffing of the throat, bobbing of the head, flicking of the tail, ritual feeding and allopreening.

They breed through much of the year with local variation. The breeding season is mainly February to April in India and December to September in Sri Lanka. Both sexes excavate the nest on the underside of a narrow horizontal branch. They may also roost inside the nest holes.

Three or four eggs are laid and like in many hole nesting birds the incubation period is not well known but has been estimated to be about 2 weeks. Both sexes incubate. Often two broods are raised in quick succession.

Mortality factors
Adult birds are sometimes taken by predatory species. In urban areas, there are records of collisions with structures including white walls. Pesticide poisoning has also been noted.

Conservation status

Least Concern (IUCN 3.1)

IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2013.2.
International Union for Conservation of Nature. Retrieved 26 November 2013.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

www.birdforum.net

Sighted: (Date of first photo that I could use) 1st of January 2016
Location: Suan Rot Fai/ Queen Sirikit Park, Bangkok

Thank's to Nick Upton at www.thaibirding.com for HOT birding tip for the Bangkok area on his web page. Read his review by clicking HERE

Visit Nick Upton at www.thaibirding.com for HOT birding tips for sites around Bangkok and Thailand. There are reviews of the birding sites with maps and information.

And if you like Nick Upton's web page you will also like www.norththailandbirding.com I have used this page together with Nick Upton's page when planning my birding tours. Excellent reviews and information about the birding sites.

I also got the Thai names of the birds from www.norththailandbirding.com. There is a bird check list with all the names in English and Thai. And of course also the Scientific Name. Down load the birdlist in Microsoft Excel format at www.norththailandbirding.com Or down load the Excel sheet by clicking HERE

PLEASE! As I'm a first time birdwatcher bear in mind that some of the bird can be wrongly named. I have bought book and I confirm on the internet to get the right identity on the birds I take pictures off. But there can still be mistakes.