Not only one sunbird baby, as there were two.
And the twins are now out of the nest in the bright sunlight.
So yeah, I could hear Mother nature laughing, and all of the birds were also laughing about her trick to get me to think that there was only one baby in the nest. She really caught me out and let me tell you that my heart soared when I saw that there were two babies.
One doesn't get two malachite babies on camera often and it made me even more determined to get them when they fly out of the nest. The thing that I worried about was that mother nature would trick me again, by suddenly sending rain down, but the bright sunlight convinced me that no rain would be coming. The bright sunlight also made taking the photos clearly very difficult.
Drat! As we arrived, I saw no movement or beaks sticking out of the nest and I knew that the twins are out of the nest.
So, I waited, and I searched and after a time I saw the dad landing on a Strelitzia bush with a dragonfly in his beak. Then bang! I found them. Hungry as ever these two little guys.
The dad decided to feed the baby at the left.
Baby screaming at the left and mom feeding to other one at the right.
Then the one jumped down to land on a branch below the bush.
Dad arrived again to feed it.
And then something worrying occurred.
The dad sat in a tree close by and he sang the alarm calls. Short and sharp, loud tweets.
Why? Look what was sitting below the tree where the dad was sounding the alarms.
Catttz! I shouted and the cat watched me coming before it took off like a rocket.
The cat will not return, as we alerted the security guards to keep an eye on the area around the babies. The babies will still hang around close to the nest for 3 or 4 days, and then they will take off to start living their own lives. During the sticking around period, the babies will still sleep in the nest at night, but thankfully the nest is surrounded by bushes with very sharp thorns. No cat will go in there.
I really hope to see the babies starting to get their male colors over the next few days, as it is wonderful to see the yellow bodies starting to turn green and blue. Soon they will look the same as their dad, and malachite sunbirds turn into adults in a very short period. The females outnumber the males, so they will have no problem to find wives, and the good thing is that they will also nest close to the area that they were born in.
So, Aluta Continua.
I hope you have enjoyed the pictures and the story.
Photos by Zac Smith-All-Rights-Reserved.
Camera: Canon PowershotSX70HS Bridge camera.
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