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Subject: Yellow puffy feather on fork-tailed sunbird? [Print This Page]

Author: laubak Time: 20/03/2010 01:04 Subject: 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.

Author: cgeoff Time: 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

Author: laubak Time: 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?

Author: gary Time: 20/03/2010 21:56

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

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