We are now in early winter, and it is also Malachite Sunbird season.
The Malachite Sunbirds (Nectarinia famosa) breed during the winter season, so that their youngsters will emerge from the nest during the early spring season. Then the youngsters will grow up very fast in order to breed as adults when the next winter season arrives.
Here below is a good Wikipedia description of the malachite sunbirds. Note that they are not hummingbirds.
Most sunbird species can take nectar by hovering like a hummingbird, but usually perch to feed most of the time. As a fairly large sunbird, the malachite sunbird is no exception. They have long thin down-curved bills and brush-tipped tubular tongues, both adaptations to nectar feeding. Some plant species from which malachite sunbirds feed include many Aloe species, such as Aloe broomii, Aloe ferox and Aloe arborescens, and Protea species, such as Protea roupelliae as well as various other bird-pollinated plants such as Leonotis and Strelitzia. It has been suggested that their behaviour of guarding flowering plants may have led to the selection and evolution of long-tubed flowers that would otherwise tend to be robbed (nectar taken but not pollinated) by short-billed sunbird species.
It was in the Autumn season when I first got him as a juvenile in the two photos below.
Back to the present, and he is an adult now, I will have to start searching for their nest soon.
Have a look at a lovely protea flower head, and the proteas grow with many colors, as there are several species in the protea family.
Some more photos of this lovely bird below.
The malachites appear on the African continent, from Ethiopia down to South Africa, and we have all of the flowers that they like down here at the southern tip of the African continent, namely in Cape Town. Apart from the protea flowers they also like many of the aloe species' tubular flowers, as the sunbirds are nectar drinkers. I have posted them and their babies many times before during the winter seasons, and I will never tire of them, as they are magical birds. Oh, and they also catch insects on the fly to feed their babies, and in one of my previous posts, I even got the dad trying to feed its baby with a large dragonfly that the dad caught.
We are blessed with an abundance of wildlife here, and it's always a pleasure for me to share some of my favorites.
Such is life.
I hope you enjoyed the pictures and the story.
Photos by Zac Smith. All-Rights-Reserved.
Camera: Canon PowershotSX70HS Bridge camera.
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