For the last few years I had the honour to regularly lead outings for SANBI at the Pretoria Botanical Gardens. While waiting on Saturday 25 October for the attendees of such an outing to arrive my curiosity was raised when a White-bellied Sunbird female flew past me straight into a Cycad a few meters from me - reappearing a few seconds later. A few minutes later the same thing happened and upon further investigation I found the nest of this beautiful sunbird bound against one of the "thorny" leafs of the cycad. When my outing had to start - I left them in peace.
The outing itself was great and we managed to inter alias record Brown-backed Honeybird and the now, it seems, resident Orange-breasted Bush-shrikes.
T
he next morning I decided to see if I could get a photograph of the nest without disturbing the sunbirds too much. In order to get a nice view of the nest I had to press the camera through the outside leafs and started to click away.
To my utter amazement the female flew in again and entered the nest right in front of me! Luckily I remember to keep taking photos and managed to get some nice ones. I then left the nest and she returned again in a few minutes. I did not hear any chicks calling but she was certainly carrying worms, so they must have been inside the nest.
The nest was about 1.5m above the ground. The cycad was one of a few on the grass patch before the entrance. According to Tarbotan’s "A guide to the nests and eggs of Southern Africa Birds" the nest of the White-bellied Sunbird “is characteristically (but not invariably) placed in a thorny plant” (P233). Cycads are not listed as one of these plants but I suppose it is somewhat thorny – so it fits.
Hundreds of people must have walked past the nest and I can only wonder how many might have noticed the cycad but not the nest inside it!
The highlight of the morning was not a rarity but a whole bunch of sunbirds!! Next to the road was a large patch of Wild Dagga (also called Lion's Ear) Leonotis leonurus. They are in full bloom at the moment and can be seen all around Pretoria (by the way if you are looking for information about plants in South Africa, I found the following website of SANBI of great value: http://www.plantzafrica.com/). This patch had about 25+ sunbirds feeding in it. The majority were White-bellied Sunbirds with a few Amethyst and one Marico male. They were calling insistently and sometimes competing for the same flower. Really something special to see. Now would you think that with all that sunbirds around it is easy to get some great photographs - alas not...
