A friend asked me if the sunbirds prefer colored flowers, and yes, they do.
The first one is a female Southern Double-collared Sunbird (5 shots), and the second one is a Cape White-eye (5 shots).
But it is not only the sunbirds that like colored flowers, as some other bird species also prefer them. Let's have a look at what Wikipedia has to say about the subject.
We have some wooden trestle flowerpots in our front garden, and we deliberately planted the Cape Honeysuckle plants for the sunbirds. We have three different colored bushes and the thing about the tubular flowers of the bushes is that they hold much nectar for the birds. What we didn't know was that the sunbirds are also pollinators as explained by Wikipedia below.
Ornithophily or bird pollination is the pollination of flowering plants by birds. This sometimes (but not always) coevolutionary association is derived from insect pollination (entomophily) and is particularly well developed in some parts of the world, especially in the tropics, Southern Africa, and on some island chains. The association involves several distinctive plant adaptations forming a "pollination syndrome". The plants typically have colourful, often red, flowers with long tubular structures holding ample nectar and orientations of the stamen and stigma that ensure contact with the pollinator. Birds involved in ornithophily tend to be specialist nectarivores with brushy tongues and long bills, that are either capable of hovering flight or light enough to perch on the flower structures.
She is a female Southern Double-collared Sunbird (Cinnyris chalybeus).
She had enough and simply took off, satisfied with her nectar drink.
And here below is the white-eye that also likes colored flowers.
The white-eyes are a family, Zosteropidae, of small passerine birds native to tropical, subtropical and temperate Sub-Saharan Africa, southern and eastern Asia, and Australasia. White-eyes inhabit most tropical islands in the Indian Ocean, the western Pacific Ocean, and the Gulf of Guinea. Discounting some widespread members of the genus Zosterops, most species are endemic to single islands or archipelagos. The silvereye, Zosterops lateralis, naturally colonised New Zealand, where it is known as the "wax-eye" or tauhou ("stranger"), from 1855. The silvereye has also been introduced to the Society Islands in French Polynesia, while the Japanese white-eye has been introduced to Hawaii.
This is a Cape White-eye (Zosterops virens). They make cute little trilling sounds, and by instinct all the little birds never overeat, as they know that it will affect their flight speed. So, they believe in rather too little than too much to eat. It is their flying speed that often saves them from a predator bird attack, as they know how to dodge and dive.
This is a very special photo, as those flower tubes are very fragile, and if you touch them too hard by hand they simply come off. Look how this little one hangs on those flowers without damaging them. Amazing dexterity.
Sometimes when we strive after the "bigger" treasures in this world, we miss the "smaller" ones. In actual fact, the "smaller" ones are the real treasures that we can discover. It is not to do with the acquisition of an object/money/assets/success/titles, but rather an appreciation for the extraordinary in the ordinary things of each day. These include things like the song of the first bird in the morning, a raindrop on a leaf after a rainstorm, or little birds active on flowers, like these in the post.
Such is life.
I hope you enjoyed the pictures and the story.
Photos by Zac Smith. All-Rights-Reserved.
Camera: Canon PowershotSX70HS Bridge camera.
Until next time, cheers!
