laubak

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.

cgeoff

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

Thank you for your explaination.
So it's supposed that every male fork-tailed sunbird have this yellow feather underneath their green wing?

gary

Quote:

Original posted by laubak at 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?

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