My bird journey - The sunbirds...

It was a fine morning, when I spotted this bird. I couldnt believe that there were such beautiful tiny birds in my garden. I immediately googled to find out more about these birds and found out that these birds were called the sunbirds.

Name : Purple Rumped Sunbird ( Male )

Name : Sunbird ( Female )

Name : Purple Rumped Sunbird ( Male and Female )- Male at the back and female in front

Location observed : Garden below the balcony of my house at BG Road, Bangalore

Size : 3-4 inches

Season Observed in : Have noticed this in the months of june, july, august, sept. Sometime, mid august onwards, the birds started building a nest.

Physical Characteristics : Male - Shiny, bluish green head, upper body. Lower wings brownish grey in colour. The portion where the wings meet the tail, called the rump is purple in colour. Hence the name Purple Rumped Sunbird.

The female is light brown in colour.

Both the male and female have a black short tail. The chest of both the male and female sunbird is lemon yellow in colour.

All in all , a very beautiful bird to look at.

Other characteristics observed : They have a very sweet melodious , not so loud, tweep. One thing that I found really strange about them is that, inspite of the fact that they are so small, they fly very high ( they fly at atleast 40 feet from the ground level ) and for long distances ( They travel for about 1/2 km to one km, without pausing to take a break ).

Generally the male and the female birds are observed together.