Thursday, June 26, 2008 So: What, the black shama is not the siloy? By Michelle P. So Caught in the Net
MY regular association with birds is the flock of sparrows I hear chirping outside my window if I happen to wake up early enough, say 9 a.m. I didn’t even know they were sparrows until Dr. Franz Seidenschwarz told me when I described them to him. I did know they weren’t vultures.
Dr. Franz, a German scientist who knows the flora and fauna of Cebu like the back of his hand, said the black shama is not the English term for siloy, a small bird that grows gazillion times bigger at the opening parade of Cebu Press Freedom Week.
The black shama is endemic to Cebu but it has no Bisdak name. “All the birds here have Cebuano names but not this one,” Dr. Franz said. For lack of its own identity, the black shama is often called the “siloy itom.” It is scientifically known as copsychus cebuensis and lives like a hermit in the forests of Cebu.
Despite its reclusive existence, the black shama has been declared by the Cebu Provincial Government as the “provincial bird of Cebu.”
That Cebu, the place that isn’t known to have a wallflower for a governor, would choose a bird that is rarely seen as a symbol is not my point. That the black shama is not the siloy is my point.
The siloy is the Oriental magpie robin and is scientifically called copsychus saularis. Dr. Franz described the siloy as a “magnificent and intelligent songbird.” But so is the black shama.
“You have to hear the sounds of the black shama and the siloy to know the difference,” he said after he tried but failed to imitate their sonance. The best time to hear them would be before 9 a.m., he said and seeing my reaction, quickly added that the birds can be heard again at 4 p.m.
The black shama is so reclusive that the only way for human beings to draw it out from its lair is to play a recording of its melodious sound.
This is what Dr. Franz did. He just stood still in the middle of the forest and played the recording. Soon enough, the black shama came out. It probably got goose bumps upon seeing the source of the sound—a tall, gray-haired, fair-skinned and wingless creature.
“What the tweet! An impostor in our midst! Tweet! Run for your tweet lives! I mean, fly, you tweet!” I’m not saying this was what the black shama said upon seeing a very still Dr. Franz. But who knows?
The misperception that the black shama is the siloy stems from the two birds having almost the same feather and flocking together in the same habitat. After all, they are biologically related. Dr. Franz, with whom my friends and I had the enjoyment of exploring a secret forest in Barangay Tabunan, Cebu City in 1998, is a walking wikipedia of Cebu fauna and flora.
The black shama is actually male. The female is called the brown shama. There is no complicated or sleep-inducing explanation to why they’re called that other than the male shama has black feathers and the female has brown.
A bit of bird trivia from Dr. Franz: As a general rule, the male birds are more colorful and like to show off. The female birds have subdued colors and like chameleons, adopt the color of their environment. The camouflage is for nest security.
If one day I wake up with a bird’s nest in my hair, I know I’ve slept too long.
