The homestay at Tangkoko on Sulawesi had a tree in its courtyard that attracted two species of flowerpeckers. One is the Grey-sided Flowerpecker.
The name undersells the bird a bit – the male is very attractive with its intensely red throat.
eBird does not seem to rate the species very highly, calling it a “tiny, stubby, plump dark songbird” and pointing out that the female is “nondescript, all gray”.
It is a Sulawesi endemic if some of the surrounding smaller islands are included – a fact also indicated by its scientific name Dicaeum celebicum (Celebes means Sulawesi).
The Yellow-sided Flowerpecker has a very similar distribution (including the same tree in the yard of the Tangkoko homestay).
Fortunately for average birders like me, the female of this species looks like the male, which saved me from having to guess the exact species of any nondescript flowerpecker female.
It feeds on fruits of mistletoes, small figs and wild cherries – maybe you can figure out yourself what this tree is.
As it is a bit smaller than the Grey-sided Flowerpecker, was sometimes chased from the tree but kept coming back.
Flowerpeckers have sometimes been included in an enlarged sunbird family, so there is some rationale for combining them with two sunbird species in this post. These species have a much wider distribution than just Sulawesi – the photos below were taken on Halmahera.
The Black Sunbird isn’t even entirely black despite the name. Johnny Cash might not approve of it.
The scientific name is Leptocoma aspasia. According to the Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names, Aspasia was a “beautiful priestess of the sun, and mistress in turn to Cyrus II and Darius I, Kings of Persia”. She was most active around 520 BC.
However, there is another Aspasia, a woman in Ancient Greece from around 470 BC to after 428 BC. She has a strangely two-sided image – on the one hand, she was portrayed as a prostitute in ancient comedy, on the other hand, as a teacher in ancient philosophy. Good at multitasking, maybe. Wikipedia adds “From the twentieth century, she has been portrayed as both a sexualized and sexually liberated woman, and as a feminist role model fighting for women’s rights in ancient Athens.”
There is a short Youtube video about the Black Sunbird which is as uninspiring as a bird video can possibly be. If you want to get rid of your enthusiasm for birds, I recommend watching it.
eBird is not impressed by the female (maybe after watching the video), calling it nondescript.
But it is busy feeding its chick rather than showing off.
“Juvenile resembles female, but is greener on crown” (Cornell)
For reasons not clear to me, the subspecies found on Halmahera is called Leptocoma aspasia auriceps (golden-crowned).
The Sahul Sunbird is one of 8 species recognized by Cornell in what they call the Olive-backed Sunbird complex, a term that still sounds slightly weird to me as the word complex either makes me think of psychiatry or of the Military-Industrial Complex (shame on me – it should make me think about chemistry as well).
In an apparent attempt to save costs, Cornell does not even have an illustration of the female online – strange given that the female completely lacks the blue throat of the male.
Most other information in the Cornell species account seems to have been just copied from the older account of the Olive-backed Sunbird – including the information that the species feeds on nectar, as shown below.
Lovely group of birds, very challenging to photograph, unless you’re Kai!
Sunbirds are often described as the Old World’s answer to hummers. Those descriptions are wrong – sunbirds are uber-cool! Their colours are amazing.