MOTHER NATURE Mother Nature September 2017 | Page 18

Mother Nature Aug /Sep 2017
17
Polanki pitta
The name pitta comes from the Telugu word meaning "small bird". Local names
in India are based on the colours and their behaviours such as the time of calling
In Hindi it is named asNaorang, in Punjabi too as Nauranga meaning Nine
colours. In Tamil it is called Aru-mani kuruvi meaning 6-O'Clock bird and in
Telugu it is known as Polanki pitta, Ponnangi pitta
The Indian pitta is a small stubby-tailed bird that is
mostly seen on the floor of forests or under dense
undergrowth, foraging on insects in leaf litter. It
has long, strong legs, a very short tail and stout
bill, with a buff coloured crown stripe, black
coronal stripes, a thick black eye stripe and white
throat and neck. The upperparts are green, with a
blue tail, the underparts buff, with bright red on
the lower belly and vent. The bird hops on the
ground to forage and has been known to get
trapped in ground traps meant for small mammals.
It has been suggested that the width of the coronal
stripe may differ in the sexes.
It is more often heard than seen and has a
distinctive loud two-note whistle wheeet-tieu or
wieet-pyou or sometimes, a triple note hh-wit-wiyu.
They have a habit of calling once or twice, often
with neighbouring individuals joining in, at dawn
or dusk leading to their common name of "Six-O-
Clock" bird in Tamil. When calling the head is
thrown back and the bill is pointed upwards.
Pittas are among the few Old World suboscine birds.
The Indian pitta is the basal member of a distinct
clade that includes many of the Oriental species. It
forms a superspecies with the fairy pitta (P. nym-
pha), mangrove pitta (P. megarhyncha) and blue-
winged pitta
Indian pittas breed mainly in the Himalayan foot-
hills from the Margalla hills northern Pakistan in
the west to at least Nepal and possibly up to Sikkim
in the east. They also breed in the hills of central
India and in the Western Ghats south to Karnataka
The Sinhalese interpretation of its call is that the
bird is complaining about the theft of its dress by a
peacock: “Evith giya, evith giya, ayith kiyannam,
methe budun buduwana vita ayith kiyannam,” which
translates as: “Came and went! Came and went! I’ll
still be complaining when the next Buddha comes!
I’ll still be complaining!
Indian pittas roost in trees. They feed on insects and
other small invertebrates that they usually pick up
from the ground or leaf litter. They have also been
noted to take kitchen food scraps from the ground