Blue-throated Barbet

Description:

Dol/Holi -is India's festival of colour; celebrated to welcome spring. This year it is on 1/2 of March respectively. Doesn't it look as if this bird has already indulged in the colourful activities of Holi! This is by far my most-fav colourful bird among all the species I see at home. It is green...after all it is a barbet... and it has a blue throat and a red, head. A touch of red at the throat...as if from a careless brush of colour-stained fingers.

Habitat:

A dead Neolamarckia cadamba tree just outside my gate...interestingly two species are trying to nest here. This barbet and a pair of black-rumped flameback (Dinopium benghalense).

Notes:

The wood pecker comes almost everyday ..I see it as I leave for work. The barbet I see from time to time...but it tries out the excavated hole and makes itself comfortable. I do not know who will win. The woodpecker also bores holes in the bamboo poles (ant-infested) on my rooftop terrace on which flowering vines climb and to which I have ties clothes lines. Interestingly a similar bamboo pole has been excavated by a black-rumped woodpecker in my neighbour's house. It hasn't moved in though....we live in hope!