Indian Treepie: The tooth-pick of the Tiger

The rufous treepie is an arboreal omnivore feeding almost completely hopping between branches in the trees on fruits, seeds, invertebrates, small reptiles and the eggs and young of birds; it has also been known to eat the flesh from recently killed mammals.

It’s a beautifully coloured bird, the size of the common crow and its harsh calls bring attention to it. According to the net,the Rufous Treepie is a long-tailed chestnut-brown bird, with sooty head and neck. The beautiful and long black-tipped tail and greyish-white wing patches, become more pronounced in flight.

Indian Tree Pie/Ranthambore National Park/©N.Shiva Kumar

According to  N.Shiva Kumar who lives in Noida, “ the Rufous Treepie is sometimes called the tooth-pick bird of the Tiger for its bold demeanor. People in Rajasthan call it coloured crow because of its family features.  Found in most of the jungles of Ranthambhore and Sariska Wildlife sanctuaries, It also occurs in cities like Delhi-NCR region where there is plenty of tree cover. The call is harsh to melodious mixed up with ringtones like sound.”

Its flight is undulating, with a swift noisy flapping, followed by a short glide on outspread wings and tail. Both sexes are alike and are found in scrub jungles. The bird is quite comfortable with humans and freely enters residential compounds and gardens.  It has a variety of calls, some loud, harsh and guttural, others pleasing and melodious.

“What strikes me most about the Indian Treepie is the range of vocalizations it can produce.

It can vary from sounding like a motorcycle struggling to start or a piano falling down the stairs. Very distinctive and unmistakable,” says Sandeep Menon from the city of Bangalore.

It is omnivorous like its cousin the crow and eats fruits, insects, lizards, frogs, centipedes and even carrion, in addition to the eggs and helpless young of birds and rodents.

“The first thing that comes to my mind about the Treepie is, their melodious mating call. Sitting under Banyan tree and listening to them, is memorable experience, even in heat of mid April. They also exhibit harsh calls when they are in a territorial dispute with Mynas and Kites. I have found them often on coconut trees,” says Chandrakantha Ursu whose pictures accompany the story.

According to a birding site, a local name for this bird is kotri is derived from the typical call while other names include Handi Chancha and taka chor (=”coin thief”).The bill is stout with a hooked tip.

The rufous treepie is an arboreal omnivore feeding almost completely hopping between branches in the trees on fruits, seeds, invertebrates, small reptiles and the eggs and young of birds; it has also been known to eat the flesh from recently killed mammals. An agile forager, it clings and clambers through the branches and sometimes teams up with mixed hunting parties, along with drongos and babblers.  

“The bird often makes a diabolical call (a constant crackling voice) akin to those to their familial evolutionary relatives – the Common Crow (Corvus splendens), and less often – a more high-pitched call characterized by a tennis ball hitting a racket at high velocity after one bounce (“pu-kwink”),” says Paul Pop who has recently passed out from Amity Institute of Forestry and Wildlife, Amity University, Noida, Uttar Pradesh with an MSc.in Wildlife Science.

Like many other corvids ( belonging to the crow family) they are known to cache food, to be eaten later. They have been considered to be beneficial to palm cultivation in southern India as they feast on the grubs of the destructive weevil Rhynchophorus ferrugineus.

The breeding season in India is April to June and they build their nests in trees and bushes on a shallow platform. The bird lays a clutch of 3-5 eggs.