Mountain Fulvetta eating a hopper?
Posted by BESG on 29 August 08, Friday
Contributed by Adrian Lim
Adrian Lim managed to few shots of the Mountain Fulvetta (Alcippe peracensis) having breakfast early one morning in May 2008. The insect it managed to capture appears to be a beetle. The bird behaves a little like a shrike in the way that it eats its prey, using its ‘claw’ to hold it.
This shy montane forest babbler is a resident of Peninsular Malaysia. Like most babblers, they move in the lower levels of the forest and it is generally difficult to photograph them.
As with the Blue-winged Minla (Minla cyanouroptera), its food is poorly recorded except small berries and small caterpillars that were observed being fed to nestlings (Wells, 2007). Collar & Robson (2007) mention only “insects” as its food.
To a suggestion that the insect may be a beetle, Prof Cheong Loong Fah wrote: “I am not sure; I am more inclined to think that it is a hopper, because the antenna is not visible, and also the shape of the wing in the …picture (in that there is a bend in the interior margin to accommodate the scutellum?).
All images by Adrian Lim.
References:
1. Collar, N. J. & Robson, C. (2007). Family Timaliidae (Babblers). Pp. 70-291 in: del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A. & Sargatal, J. eds. Handbook of the birds of the world. Vol. 12. Picathartes to Tits and Chikadees. Barcelona: Lynx Editions.
2. Wells, D.R. (2007). The birds of the Thai-Malay Peninsular. Vol. II, Passerines. Christopher Helm, London.
This post is a cooperative effort between www.naturepixels.org and BESG to bring the study of bird behaviour through photography to a wider audience.
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Categories: Feeding-invertebrates
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