You know you're in the Fynbos once you
hear the distinctive tseu tseu, a noise a bit like that a child would
make to imitate the laser guns from Star Wars. And watching them
darting around the proteas I can't help feeling they are playing,
rather than engaged in the eternal fight for life.
The following is the text of a pro-bona
article penned for the most recent issue of African Birdlife:
Its not hard to see why this bird is
described as beautiful – the male is the most distinctive and
gorgeous of the sunbirds in southern Africa. This bird has brought
numerous tourists to South Africa, and so it has a pivotal role to
play in supporting not just the multi-million rand avitourism
industry, but tourism to South Africa in general. As such, it is
important not only for biodiversity functioning (through its role as
the key pollinator for numerous red and long-corolla erica species),
but also for our economy.
So clearly the bird is beautiful from
various view-points, but why is it also 'bold'? Field observations of
flight initiation distances (a bird's 'comfort zone') show that this
is the least skittish of all our Fynbos endemic bird species. Even
birds in remote areas will let one approach to within a few meters
before taking flight to safer distances. It is also very curious, and
it is not uncommon for young birds to approach human observers to
almost touching distance.
Perhaps for these two reasons this is
the most uploaded of the six Fynbos endemic bird species onto the
photo sharing website Flikr so far this year, although there is a
clear sex bias, with photos of males outranking females over ten to
one.
Ecologically, this seems to be a fairly
resilient species – it can be abundant in certain Fynbos habitats,
survives on tiny unburnt fragments after a fire, it breeds from very
young, has an extended breeding period, can double brood and so
recovers populations fairly quickly after fires. Mostly associated
with erica plant species, it also feeds from several widespread
proteas and a variety of other flower types, as well as insects and
spiders. As such, it is difficult to pin down exactly why this
species hasn't spread further afield across South Africa, and a
combination of food suitability and suitable climate may be the
answers.
Research published nearly a decade ago
suggested this species would soon be loosing large areas of suitable
bioclimatic space, and SABAP data shows moderate decreases in both
range and reporting rate between atlas periods – in comparison to
the Amethyst Sunbird happily expanding its range across the Western
Cape. While there is no need to panic yet, we all need to do our bit
in order to ensure that this energetic mascot of the Fynbos will be
able to continue working hard for us all well into the future.
