laubak 20/03/2010 01:04
Yellow puffy feather on fork-tailed sunbird?
Sorry for the poor photo quality as it was too far away and it was pretty dark when I spot it.
Never saw any fork-tailed sunbird with this yellow puffy feather on it back/tail.
Can any expert pls let me know why there's such feather?
Thanks.
[IMG]http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m305/alfistizone/IMG_1171.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m305/alfistizone/IMG_1181.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m305/alfistizone/IMG_1179.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m305/alfistizone/IMG_1174.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m305/alfistizone/IMG_1170.jpg[/IMG]
cgeoff 20/03/2010 07:50
This male is displaying. By fluffing up the feathers in this way, they become much more obvious and thus act as a display mechanism.
It could be displaying to a female, or perhaps to another male in its territory.
GeoffC
laubak 20/03/2010 11:48
Thank you for your explaination.
So it's supposed that every male fork-tailed sunbird have this yellow feather underneath their green wing?
gary 20/03/2010 21:56
[quote]Original posted by [i]laubak[/i] at 20/03/2010 11:48 [url=http://www.hkbws.org.hk/BBS/redirect.php?goto=findpost&pid=28847&ptid=10938][img]http://www.hkbws.org.hk/BBS/images/common/back.gif[/img][/url]
Thank you for your explaination.
So it's supposed that every male fork-tailed sunbird have this yellow feather underneath their green wing? [/quote]
It can be answered ecologically, if not morphologically.
If a male does not have the yellow feather, how can it attracts female, mates and passes its gene to offspring?
I also had some sighting of this ritual dance in KFBG today. Very impressive.
Gary