Blue-eared barbet sighted!

With untimely rains, the mandar trees shed their blooms and the birds no longer visited these trees so frequently. From the tower of the Satchhari National Park, birds were hardly seen three days after the rain. On the fourth day it was the same. Various birds did come along, but didn’t sit on the mandar tree. We were looking for a new bird.

All of a sudden a friend called me and said, “There's a green bird is on the bare tree. What bird is it?” I rushed to him. I looked through my camera's viewfinder and was delighted. “This is the bird that I have been searching for over decade!" I only took four pictures, then the bird flew to the flowering trees. And I took ten shots at a stretch.

This small resident blue-eared barbet (locally called 'neelkan basanta bauri') is a rare bird in Bangladesh. Its scientific name is psilopogon cyanotis and it is of megalaimidae family. The bird is seen in south and south-east Asian countries.

The adult blue-eared barbet is 16-17cm long and weighs 32-40 grams. Its feathers are green. It's face, throat, and ears are blue. There is a pale orange patch below its eyes and red markings above and below the ear-patch. Its beaks, legs and claws are black. The forehead of male adult blue-eared barbet is black. A female adult has a dull black forehead and orange markings on the top of and the below the ear. The young bird is green with blue on its ears and throat.

These are birds of the evergreen forests in Chattogram and Sylhet. They tend to stay alone or in pairs and never sit on the ground. They are mainly fruit eating birds but also catch insects. Their have a harsh and tinny call.

April-June is their breeding season. They build nest in the tree hollows. They lay two to four eggs and hatch chicks in 13-15 days. They live for more than eight years.

ANM Aminur Rahman is a professor at Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Agricultural University, Gazipur.

This feature appeared in the print and online edition of Prothom Alo and has been rewritten for the English edition by Hasanul Banna