I’ve always loved woodpeckers, must be that childhood influence of Woody Woodpecker cartoons, so my childlike delight on coming across this fine specimen of a Crimson-Backed Flameback at office when I just happened to have my camera was quite understandable. The jungles of Malabe do have the advantage of having a lot of bird life.It was quite interesting how I saw this one. I was just at this desk and looked up, out the window, and it occurred to me that that dark lump in the tree wasn’t something that was there before. I took a closer look, and viola, Flameback. Luckily my office colleagues are used to me running around with a camera, so no one looked twice as I grabbed the cam and ran out to the balcony.
Quite interesting fellows these. They specially look like Woody coz of the gorgeous red plume of feathers on their heads. This chap's plume is quite muted, makes me think its not quite a mature specimen. Possibly an immature male or a female, judging but the wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_flameback. (That article features a picture of the only other time I saw a Flameback. Crappy picture of one on my back wall years ago with a really old fuji digicam. But you can clearly see the spectacular plume of red feathers on that ones head). As noted in the article, it supports itself on its tail feathers, behavior which can be seen in the picture below.
Now the technical details, the Sri Lankan Crimson-backed Flameback (Chrysocolaptes lucidus stricklandi) is sometimes considered a Greater Flameback subspecies, sometimes considered a distinct species. Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flameback for a description of the genus.
