Country notebook:m.krishnan

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

COUNTRY NOTEBOOK: M.Krishnan : VOICE OF THE DUMB :The Sunday Statesman: 27 July 2014

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Voice of the Dumb
(The Spoonbill and The Openbill)

"IN this loud world, silence is remarkable. It is not less so in the avian world, for birds are voluble creatures, much given to song and chatter and gesticulation. The mechanism of sound production in birds is peculiar; without going into the technicalities, it may be said that in them the voice-box is placed much lower down than in other animals. However, this does not affect their ability to produce a number of calls and churring sounds and songs - in fact, I doubt whether class of animals is so varied in its voice. Some birds, however, are laconic in the extreme, rarely coming out with any sound beyond a harsh croak, and some are practically dumb, their only recorded sounds being a grunt, usually indulged in during the breeding season, and a claterring together of the mandibles. Such silent fowl are usually water-birds.

During March and April this year, I spent quite some time verifying earlier observation on THE VOCAL EFFORTS OF TWO WELL-KNOWN DUMB WATER-BIRDS, THE SPOONBILL AND THE OPENBILL. At Vedanthangal near Madras, where I found opportunity to observe and listen to these quaint birds, there is a mixed breeding colony of over a dozen species, several thousand water-birds nesting in the half- submerged grove of Baringtonias in the village tank during the rains. I had to wait till most of the breeding birds had left and till the tank bed was more or less dry before I could get the verification I wanted, for the large mixed din of a large heronry can be most confusing, and in judging sounds it is better to get near and use one's ears than to rely on observation through binoculars.

It has been said of the INDIAN SPOONBILL that "a low grunt and a clattering of the mandibles are the only sounds uttered" by the bird. In a dozen books on Indian bird consulted, I could find no other call or sound recorded except for RS Dharmakumarsinghji's reference to a "soft whistling note" in his Birds of Saurashtra. Recording another call, which is neither a grunt nor a clattering of the beak, I should certainly like to describe in detail the seductive and so-far-unreported love-song of the Spoonbill, but a naturalist is limited, by a stupid code, to the bare truth. I cannot report anything better than a hiccup.

However, this hiccup is much the most typical call of the breeding spoonbill (in the South, at any rate); the bird does indulge in low grunts, especially at the nest, but this hiccup seem to be its call note. Since I am satisfied that some of the breeding birds at Vedanthangal (and elsewhere in the South) exhibit certain peculiarities of plumage and behaviour, I should add that the Spoonbills here are in no way different from those breeding elsewhere in India.

The full nuchal crest was very much in evidence, the adult birds had a yellow fringe to the broad tip of their spatulate bills, there was the collar of dull cinnamon at the base of the neck, and the chin, from the base of the lower mandible to the throat, was bare and yellow to orange-yellow, with a fringe of Chinese vermilion to this bare patch where it met the throat. The bare patch pulsated as the birds panted open-billed, as most birds do during the heat of the summer afternoon in the South - I draw attention to this bare, yellow chin-patch, as at the moment of calling the skin of this patch is not drawn in (as when the bird is at rest) but slightly puffed out.

I refer, of course, to the fully adult breeding birds. Infant Spoonbills look like nothing so much as miniature dodos - they have pink, hook-tipped bills, swollen in the middle like the bill of a nestling pigeon, and they cheep loudly at the nest, very much in the manner of pigeon squabs. In fact, I noticed even the young of EGRETS (birds known only to grunt when adult) had quite expressive voices, and uttered a loud, yickering cheep when urging their parents to feed them. The food-calls of the infant, like at any mixed heronry, are quite a feature of such places, and I shall not refer to them here.

The call of the adult Spoonbill is most completely described as a subdued but clearly audible hiccup, somewhat high in pitch - I fancy that a well-bred lady, trying ineffectually to supress a hiccup in the party, would emit a very similar sound. The call has the same duration as a hiccup, and the bill is open at the time it is uttered, being closed immediately after. There can be no question of the sound being produced by any action of the mandibles as they are open when the bird is calling.The skin of the chin, as already said, is noticeable during the call. The birds call both from the perch and when on the wing. My photography of a perched spoonbill calling shows the bill almost closed, at the end of the hiccup; the flying bird was snapped in the middle of its call.

At first I was not sure if the bird called when on the wing - I could see the flying bird opening and then quickly closing its bill and the bulging of the chin-patch, I thought I heard the hiccup faintly high above me in the air, but so prone is the ear to hear what the eye sees, and the mind knows, that I was in doubt. Later I was able to hear the call from birds flying low overhead, and I am now certain that they do call at times, while flying.

The call of the laconic OPENBILL is even more remarkable.The only sound so far recorded of this stork is a clattering noise produced by the mandibles, the usual stork-sound. The openbill is not only the smallest of our storks but also the quaintest. The mandibles meet at the tip and the base but in the middle there is a clear gap between them. As in the spoonbill, the nestling has quite a different kind of beak - thick and wedge-shaped, with no gap in the middle. As it grows, the beak grows much longer, but the bill remains straight even when the young bird is well able to fly, and almost as big as its parents - it is a tapering wedge then, the gap in the middle and the consequent bi-convex contour of the outer edges of the coming with age.

Openbill nestlings, clamouring for food, produce a distinctive noise that is midway between a Yap and a Yicker, the three-quarters grown young, perching on treetops, makes a similar sound when begging food from its parents, but at this stage the sound is much more a Yap than a Yicker. When they are grown and can fly freely, the young birds gather together in sub-adult parties and perch on treetops in between feeding expeditions. They are now almost on the point of leaving for their feeding grounds perhaps hundreds of miles away. While roosting in company, at times they Yap in chorus. And so do their grown-up parents, roosting on another tree.

At Vedanthangal, I found about two dozen young openbills late in April - right at the other end of the grove of trees, almost diagonally opposite, there were an equal number of adult birds (some of the breeding pairs of recently-ended season), also roosting in close company. At times, one or two of the older birds would fly across to join the junior set, but this was exceptional - most of the time the two generations kept apart. The young birds were yapping occasional, infrequent calls, usually produced by just one or two birds. But the older birds indulged at times in a sustained chorus of muffled yelps - a sound not wholly unlike a chorus of faraway puppies, if one was sufficiently imaginative!

I noticed, both while the old birds were calling and while the younger birds were, that the call was uttered with the bill open - I mean, with the mouth open, for the bill of the adult openbill is always open! So far as I could note, this yapping is only indulged in when the birds are roosting together and perhaps only when they are assembled together preparatory to departure from the breeding colony. The young birds were noticeably less persistent with this strange chorus than their parents."

- M.Krishnan

This was first published on 19 May 1957 in The Sunday Statesman


#Two action photographs showing (1) Young openbills "yapping" (2)The "hiccupping" call of the spoonbills not reproduced here.