The Brown-headed Barbet or Large Green Barbet (Megalaima zeylanica) is an Asian barbet. Barbets and toucan

Toucan

Toucans are members of the family Ramphastidae of near passerine birds from the Neotropics. The family is most closely related to the American barbets. They are brightly marked and have large, often colorful bills. The family includes five genera and about forty different species...

s are a group of near passerine

Near passerine

Near passerine or higher land-bird assemblage are terms often given to arboreal birds or those most often believed to be related to the true passerines due to ecological similarities; the group corresponds to some extent with the Anomalogonatae of Garrod All near passerines are land birds...

 bird

Bird

Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

s with a worldwide tropical distribution. The barbets get their name from the bristles which fringe their heavy bills.

The Brown-headed Barbet is a resident breeder in India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

 and Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...

. It is an arboreal species of gardens and wooded country which eats fruit

Fruit

In broad terms, a fruit is a structure of a plant that contains its seeds.The term has different meanings dependent on context. In non-technical usage, such as food preparation, fruit normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of certain plants that are sweet and edible in the raw state,...

 and insect

Insect

Insects are a class of living creatures within the arthropods that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body , three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae...

s. It nests in a tree hole, laying 2-4 egg

Egg (biology)

An egg is an organic vessel in which an embryo first begins to develop. In most birds, reptiles, insects, molluscs, fish, and monotremes, an egg is the zygote, resulting from fertilization of the ovum, which is expelled from the body and permitted to develop outside the body until the developing...

s. The bird is largely frugivorous on mangos, ripe jack, papaya, banana and similar cultivated fruit trees. Its habitat includes urban and country gardens though it tends to eschew heavy forest. It nests in a suitable hole in a tree that it will often excavate out, not unlike a woodpecker. A pair will take it in turns to incubate the eggs and they often communicate with each other using their Kura, kura calls.

This is a relatively large barbet at 27 cm. It is a plump bird, with a short neck, large head and short tail.

The adult has a streaked brown head, neck and breast, with a yellow eye patch. The rest of the plumage

Feather

Feathers are one of the epidermal growths that form the distinctive outer covering, or plumage, on birds and some non-avian theropod dinosaurs. They are considered the most complex integumentary structures found in vertebrates, and indeed a premier example of a complex evolutionary novelty. They...

 is green. The bill is thick and red. Sexes are similar.

The White-cheeked Barbet

White-cheeked Barbet

The White-cheeked Barbet or Small Green Barbet is a species of barbet found in southern India. It is very similar to the more widespread Brown-headed Barbet but this species has a distinctive supercilium and a broad white cheek stripe below the eye and is endemic to the forest areas of the...

 largely replaces this species in the Western Ghats

Western Ghats

The Western Ghats, Western Ghauts or the Sahyādri is a mountain range along the western side of India. It runs north to south along the western edge of the Deccan Plateau, and separates the plateau from a narrow coastal plain along the Arabian Sea. The Western Ghats block rainfall to the Deccan...

 and hilly parts of southern peninsular India although both species may occur in many places. The calls of this species is similar but the white cheek patch is distinctive.

The call is a repetitive kutroo…kutroo…kutroo. Others take up the call when one starts. Somewhat silent in the winter.

In Culture

In Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...

, this bird is known as Polos Kottoruwa in the Sinhala Language