Rama Krishna Sangem
BRS former Rajya Sabha MP and Green India challenge founder activist J Santosh Kumar continued his pet mission of #weekendphotography into happy new year, 2026. Religiously, on Sunday morning, January 4, he posted four pics of a cute, little, colourful rufous treepie sitting pretty on a fading green tree branch, apparently in Hyderabad and its surroundings. And what? these pics got close to 1,500 views and 100 plus likes.
If we look at the pics, Santosh posted on his X handle, we will know they are a visual delight. Clear blue sky backdrop, thick green tree and a gold hued tiny, yet nimble little bird rufous treepic, some say, in it’s called Gorinja. This bird is commonly sighted in and around our Hyderabad city.
The nominate subspecies is found in the northeastern part of peninsular India south to Hyderabad. The desert form is paler and called pallida, vernayi of the Eastern Ghats is brighter while parvula of the Western Ghats is smaller in size, says Wikipedia.
South Asian bird
The form in Afghanistan and Pakistan is bristoli while the form in southern Thailand is saturatior. E. C. Stuart Baker describes sclateri from the upper Chindwin to the Chin Hills and kinneari from southern Myanmar and northwest Thailand. The population in eastern Thailand an Indochina is sakeratensis, says experts on the birds.
The rufous treepie is primarily an arboreal omnivore feeding on invertebrates, small reptiles and the eggs and young of birds, seeds,fruits and nectar of Bombax ceiba. Its feeds on the fruits of Trichosanthes tricuspidata, which are toxic to mammals.It also feeds on carcass and is an agile forager, clinging and clambering through the branches and sometimes joining mixed-species feeding flocks along with species such as drongos and babblers.
They are known to be a cleaning symbiont of deer, feeding on ectoparasites of sambar deer, which permit them to perch and position themselves to invite the birds to examine specific parts. Like many other corvids, it caches food. It is considered to be beneficial to palm cultivation in southern India
