572 
PICARIAN BIRDS. 
Tinker-Barbets. 
Brown Barbet. 
and seeds, but it will to some extent accommodate itself as regards food to the 
produce of the locality in which it happens to be located. It is rather a lively 
bird, and sometimes suspends itself below the fruit on which it is feeding, and 
makes its repast while hanging in that position. Mr. Layard designates the note 
of this bird as of three syllables, poo-poo-poop, resembling those of the copper¬ 
smith of India. 
There are thirteen of these tiny birds ( Barbatula ), the largest of 
which is only 6 inches in length, while the majority of the species 
scarcely exceed 3 inches. They are all inhabitants of tropical Africa, occurring 
everywhere from Senegambia and Abyssinia south to the Cape Colony. Of the 
little tinker-barbet of Natal ( B. pusilla ) Mr. Ayres writes that “ the note of this 
curious little bird so much resembles the tapping of a hammer on an anvil (having 
that peculiar metallic ring) that it is called in Natal the tinker-bird. It is silent 
during the winter months, commencing its monotonous cry in the spring, and 
continuing it throughout the summer. The colour of the tinker-birds is black, 
streaked or spotted with yellow; the forehead being red or yellow. In some 
of them there is a white or yellow eyebrow, and a band of red or yellow across 
the rump. 
Like the preceding, this barbet ( Galorhamphus hctyi ) is a member 
of the smooth-billed section of the family. It ranges from Southern 
Tenasserim through the Malay Peninsula to Sumatra, and is remarkable for its 
sombre plumage, being dark brown, washed with olive-yellow on the upper-parts 
and yellowish white below, with the throat tinted with red. The bill is black in 
the male, and reddish or ochre-brown in the female. The length of the bird is 
about 6| inches. In Borneo a second species occurs, with a brighter and more 
brick-red throat (G. fuliginosus). 
This genus ( Megalcema ) contains only two species, which are the 
largest of the whole family, measuring over a foot in length; one 
(M. marsliallorum) inhabiting the Himalaya, while the other (M. vixens) extends 
from Burma to Southern China. The colour is green, with a brownish mantle, and 
the hind-neck streaked with yellow; the head is blue, as is also the under surface, 
except on the sides of the body, which are green, and the fore-neck, which is dark 
brown marked with greenish blue; the bill is pale yellow. The Himalayan species 
is a well-known feature of the liill-country, where its curious wailing cry is often 
heard, especially in all the warmer and well-wooded valleys. According to Mr. 
Thompson, the hillmen have a story that a person who suffered unjustly from law¬ 
suits, and who died in consequence, was changed into this bird, whose .cry is, 
un-nee ow, un-nee ow, meaning, “Injustice, injustice.” This species and its 
Burmese ally both appear to make their own nest-holes, which they drill into a 
tree like a woodpecker; many of the barbets laying their eggs in holes on the 
under side of a branch. All the larger green barbets of the genera Cyanops and 
Chotorhea also hollow out their own nest-holes, and Colonel Legge says that, in the 
case of the Ceylonese barbet the same nest-hole is not used twice; “ but, having 
found a tree with wood suited to its work, it perforates it each year for the new 
nest, as many as eight or ten holes being sometimes visible in a tree by a jungle 
roadside. It is only when sounding wood before making its nest that these birds 
Great Barbets. 
