Country notebook:m.krishnan

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

"......Naturally,few birds ever come to the palms(Coconut trees),except to perch on the great leaves,but recently a pair of Golden-backed Woodpeckers have taken to visiting their trunks.They do not stay for long on any tree,but fly from one coconut to another,settling squarely on the vertical boles as casually as other birds hop on to boughs.I find these woodpeckers fascinating.They look so ornate and outlandish,like birds out of a fairytale,and as they run easily up the sheer surface,or slip down it,with no change in their rigidly held pose but for quick,sideways transpositions,they donot look like birds at all.Their movements have that quality of change of place,without obvious,free use of limbs,that suggests clockwork.But whoever heard of clockwork birds that also call to each other in long,harsh,chattering laughs and have the plumage and mannerisms of the creatures of the fantastic brothers Grimm!
Actually these woodpeckers represent no exotic,romantic survivals,but extreme adaptation to a way of life.Their chisel-tipped beaks sound bark and crevice for grubs and wood-boring insects most efficiently,and their stiff tail feathers serve as props in their precarious stance.At first it may seem strange that things as flimsy as feathers should bear body weight of these woodpeckers(like weight of most birds)is surprisingly little,and tail feathers only help, in an adventitious manner, as a third leg.
Woodpeckers are so used to verticle surfaces that movement along them is normal and easy for them-they have been observed asleep,stuck on to a tree trunk.
The woodpecker clan is much given to contrasty colour,but no other member of this specialist family has the barbarous splendour of plumage of the Golden-back.The gold of its back is deep and glints in the sun,its crest is a pure crimson and its bib of white-dotted black and dark wings set off these rich tones emphatically.And its broad-winged,dip-and-rise flight,direct from tree to tree,is not what one would expect from a bird of its size,almost a foot long........."
-M.Krishnan
(First published on 21.01.1951 in the Sunday Statesman)