As I sat down to get started on a short research article, I heard strange sounds of “woh...arrr!” “woh...arr!” from the garden. Wifey rushed in with a very colourful bird in hand and said, “Pumpkin has been playing with this poor bird on the ground!” I took a look at the bird and I was amazed, immediately taken in, fascinated! “Wow!... I’ve never seen a bird like this all my life, have you?” There was silence, so Wifey has apparently not.
....and it looked like this bird has forgotten how to fly; for she was too stunned by Pumpkin, an adult labrador’s cheeky moves – pawing a bit here and there with her ever so playfully. I noticed a slight bruise on her belly; or maybe that was the reason why she didn’t took flight. We put the bird in Pumpkin’s wire-meshed dog-house and stocked it up with a dish-full of water.
It was fun for Pumpkin to toy around with Pitty-Pitty locked inside the makeshift bird-cage, his erstwhile home. Pumpkin was strutting proud, feeling and looking smug, the whole day over his "prized catch". 
I quickly began my observation on this bird.
She has a black eye-band like what the Spanish hero Zorro wears. She is remarkably distinct. The black design on top of her head makes her look like she’s wearing a rabbi’s skull cap; and she’s a kaleidoscope of colours, so to speak.
But the calls, “Woh...arr, woh...arr, woh...arr!” they were very LOUD calls; to me, quite discordant and rather unpleasant to the ears. She sounded like a terrible singer hogging the microphone in a karaoke bar. Ugh!!!
Her wailing calls (not singing) continued as she showed off her colours and “colour”. She clearly displayed signs of stress, confusion and anger with her “don’t-you-dare-touch-me” stare through her mean eyes, pupils dilated.
Nice plumes, wonderful mix of colours... brilliant blue wings on the outside, a medium olive green back, a light ochre coloured chest and yes.... she wears a red-colour “undie” at you know where, starting from between her legs! She knows how to wear it, and hide it for that matter, and I could only see it when she bends to take a sip of the water, or while trying to break through the wire-meshed enclosure.
Oh well, voyeurism is the art of bird-watching – we hear that time and again, don't we?She measures a good 7.5 inches from “bill-to-behind”, pardon my pun, I am no ornithologist.
And she is a real beauty, very leggy, but too twiggy I think. A 4-inch leg length, and three long and strong pinkish android-like claws on each leg. Her bill, (or beak?) is rather short and blackish, not the type of Angelina Jolie’s that every sane man would want to peck.
And when she spread her wings, wow! More colours are revealed – white wing bars under the brilliant blue wing, bordered by solid black feathers; the contrast is so definitive. The wings become extended as it opened up; it created some kind of size illusion but in reality only exposing her actual wing-span. Apparently she has what I see as some kind of “natural mechanical wing extensions"! The 5-inch long wings on the outside becomes easily 8~9 inches on each fully opened wing. I began to understand that her wings are not only for flight but also for fight when threatened and acutely stressed! “Fight or flight”, “fright-freeze-fight or flight” were also probably inspirations by birds, their contribution to this common hackneyed english expression.
Damn! I thought I knew a lot about birds. I know nothing.
So, with a nerve-wrecking, curious urge to find out more about this bird, I dashed back to my study room, my SOHO, to quickly bing, google, yahoo and wiki for images of “rare Malaysian birds”, “endangered Malaysian birds” - chucking aside the on-going research article that I was compiling on Malaysian SMEs.
After a 20-minute search, I found her. And there she is, in an artist’s painting that looked like this bird. And there is a German ornithologist, Hermann Schlegel credited for his studies (1863) on this bird, a Pitta Megarhyncha.Yes, that’s her scientific name. And “mangrove pitta”, that’s her binomial name. At last, I know something about this bird. Her scientific name is beautiful, a name even fit for a glamorous Hollywood personality. ...and she’s mine, finder’s keepers. I decided to give her a cute sounding pet name, Pitty-Pitty; just to make it up, to cover her singing flaws - and as a reflection of what she was going through.
Hmm, now I sound like a real bird-person, don’t I?
I did more than a hundred SLR shots from different angles on the EOS-550 and made 12 video clips of Pitty-Pitty. It is now taking up 5.9 gig space on my hard-disk, but no complaints; I am now in possession of nice, high density visuals in a folder on the taxon that is in the NT (Near-Threatened IUCN 3.1) and is red-flagged; to show my friends, associates and share it with interested parties!
More read-ups, and I get to know from avian writer Daisy O’Neil (2009 June) article in the Bird Ecology Study Group.....
“With only five species represented in Peninsular Malaysia, each with low count population, fewer still their known habitats, these colourful, ground dwelling creatures are much besotted by birders and photographers for looks and keep sake”.
Keep sake? Oh no, not me. I’m going to set Pitty-Pitty free....in due time. ...and hah!... I can now safely guess that Pitty-Pitty must have flown from the mangrove swamps of the Perai River; and home in Palm Villas Butterworth is just about a mile or two away, depending on which part of the Perai River’s mangrove swamp Pitty-Pitty flew from.
Another check with Wikipedia, and it became clear why Pitty-Pitty landed on our garden “for some fun with Pumpkin and me....”
“Pittas are medium-sized by passerine standards, at 15 to 25 centimetres in length, and stocky, with longish strong legs, very short tails and stout bills. Many, but not all, are brightly coloured. The name is derived from the word pitta in the Telugu language of Andhra Pradesh in India and is a generic local name used for all small birds.
These are fairly terrestrial birds of wet forest floors. They eat snails, insects and similar invertebrate prey. Pittas are mostly solitary and lay up to six eggs in a large spherical nest in a tree or shrub, or sometimes on the ground. Both parents care for the young. Many species of pittas are migratory, and they often end up in unexpected places like house-gardens during migration.”
And BirdLife International listed this bird - “ Pitta megarhyncha 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
After more than 8 hours of “home-stay” at Pumpkin’s home, including hours of quarrelling with “house owner” Pumpkin, showing off her colours in a couple of hours of photography and video shoots, frequent dips into the water dish, and several futile attempts to fly out of the cage; Pitty-Pitty was set for freedom. With Pumpkin on a leash and ready for his evening walk, Wifey opened the cage to release Pitty-Pitty. Time to go.
I expected her to be really confused and wearily stressed out upon release. She might even do a “kamikaze”, or some kind of “hara-kiri” - like a crash landing, and kill herself. I felt so sorry for her condition, her sacrifice; just to let a dog and his master learn, and hopefully get me entwined in activities not to hurt their habitat and ecology. Yes, she did.
What a noble bird.
Unwittingly, she just took the small step to be in a stranger’s garden, but she made a big mental impact to create a heightened environmental awareness in me.
What I did in return for Pitty-Pitty’s sacrifice was to blog on this adventurous and brave bird; and I showed her to my equally astonished and bewildered neighbours, who were mesmerised by her colours. I also wasted no time to quickly post this encounter on my facebook’s wall - hopefully, to let my friends be conscious about the negative environmental impact that is depriving them the right to survive on earth. After fluttering about in the opened cage, Pitty-Pitty flew out of it - and what a beautiful sight that was, but not until she “crashed-boomed-banged” into the mirrored sliding door of a neighbour’s house – and landed on a garden yet again.
What a pitty, and do pity Pitty-Pitty.
That neighbour has been away for a few days already, and I could not make any access to his garden for any rescue operations. Pitty-Pitty stood still for 10 minutes, dazed, but was still on her feet. Pumpkin and I watched. Fine, she’s fine, just dazed. I just let it be, heaven help us all.
Pumpkin and I went for our 30-minute walk. When we returned, Pitty-Pitty was still standing there at the same spot, and would not fly no matter how I shoo-ed her to do so.
What a sad and pitiful sight. Pitty-Pitty was only air-borne again only after some 100 minutes upon release from 8 hours of a “home-stay” in a doggie-house. Finally, the bird has flown. It must have been a frightening experience for her, but with all having said and done, that experience for Pitty-Pitty, Wifey, Pumpkin and I, was not in vain.
Again, Pumpkin and I stood and watched her in her farewell flight. And we say in our hearts, “Bye-bye, come visit us again some time.”
I had fun and wonderful journey of discovery, learning about this colourful taxon from the world-wide-web and the live sample in Pitty-Pitty herself. It was an exhilarating experience of course, complete satisfaction to the bone. After more than three days, I still feel this exhilaration!What an experience!
For a fact-file on Mangrove Pittas, click to http://www.birdlife.org and search Pitta Megarhyncha
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