 |
| Whitebellied Sunbird Male Nectarinia talatala |
We have a few residential sunbirds in the neighbourhood - not the very flashy ones like those in the fynbos areas of South Africa, but none the less gorgeous little birdies.
The Whitebellied sunbird, Nectarinia talatala is a common sight
for those living close to bushveld towards the northern parts of southern
Africa. It is a smaller sunbird about 11 cm and the males have metallic bottle
green upper backs and heads, with a purple band that separates the white belly.
Colourful males aside, this article features the females, which are often overlooked because of their pale colourations.
 |
| Whitebellied Sunbird Female Nectarinia talatala |
We have a Bird of Paradise (Sterlitzea spp.)
plant in the centre of the vegetable garden, which houses a large collection of
hedgehog and garbage line spiders (see my Spider Biocontrol Post). These make
up the front line of my garden defence against pestilences. However the female
spiders laid their eggs in the webs and during the course of winter most adults are
either eaten (by bulbuls) or succumb to the cooler temperatures. The egg
casings stay safe until spring and hatch out to thousands of little spindly spiderlings. Before the garden turned into a spider nursery this year, we observed
some interesting behaviour from the sunbird females...
The tiny birds would swoop into
the Sterlitzea plant - at first we assumed it was for the
nectar (since we saw the males feeding on the flowers - picture above).
Yet the females weren't feeding on the flowers, then we saw them eyeing the spider
webs and again we thought that they were eating the spiders (maybe the baby
birds need some protein rather than nectar?), but the spider webs were empty. So
I sat outside about 2 m away from the Sterlitzea and watched as the female
(indifferent to my presence) bounced around inside. There were two photographers
snapping up the action - I was outside and another was hiding behind the curtains
of a window closer to the action. Here is what we saw:
 |
| Whitebellied Sunbird Femlae collecting spiderwebs Nectarinia talatala |
The female sunbird was collecting spider
webs - I could hear her beak make a loud clap every time she gathered up a
beakful! This was strange - we have never heard of such behaviour and it lead
to some investigating... Many birds collect spider silk from empty webs as part
of the nest construction (males and females both partake in this behaviour)
seemingly using the material as sticky tape for the structural scaffolding of
the nest and to keep other add-ons from falling off.
We had lots of fun observing the
fascinating behaviour and it was truly special to be so close to a very skittish
wild bird - here I have another photo of the black-eyed Bulbul female (Pycnonotus barbatus) also making a stop
at the Sterlitzea to gather up some spider silk nesting material.
 |
| Blackeyed Bulbul female collecting spiderwebs Pycnonotus barbatus |
References:
____________________________________________________________________________________
If you enjoy the content please share
with fellow gardening enthusiasts via the various sharing buttons at the end of
posts/pages! Else you can vote for posts through the Google reactions bar at
the end of articles. To stay up to date I have provided several reader and
social networking platforms with which to subscribe: Twitter, Pinterest, RSS
Feed Reader or Email/Follow directly using the Blog Followers or Follow Your
Way widget on the left hand side toolbar. Thank you for reading and please feel
free to ask if questions arise - I appreciate comments and ideas too! J
____________________________________________________________________________________
