Thick-billed Flowerpecker - Juvenile bird feeding another juvenile
Thick-billed Flowerpecker is small flowerpecker seen in
Gujarat. They visit our campus on regular basis due to presence of many
berry-bearing trees. Among these trees Cluster Fig tree are their favorite. In
the season of fruit, we use to hear their call from Fig tree almost every
morning, afternoon and evenings.
On early morning of 11th April 2018, we heard
peculiar call from a Fig tree, which we suspect belongs to juvenile birds. On
close observation we spotted three Thick-billed Flowerpecker, two of them are
juvenile birds. We clicked some images and observed their behavior. Juvenile
birds are still shaky but looks explorative, already started to peck and feed
on fig fruits. Adult bird came to feed them with protein diet – arthropod
prey, at relatively long intervals. Juveniles continued feeding, foraging and
keep calling for adult whole the time.
One juvenile is more actively foraging, pecking and feeding
in compare to another. Active one was pecking fruit, puncture it and feeding
from it. Another one came to feed from same fruit. Both juvenile perched side
by side and fed from same fruit turn by turn.
Meantime suddenly we observed that one juvenile of
Thick-billed Flowerpecker demanding food from another juvenile bird. To our
surprise first juvenile actually feed second juvenile with fruit mash!!! This
action repeated several time. We were quite amazed as we saw this behavior for
first time. We observed their presence in same area for another 5 days in
row.
To us this behavior gives the impression of stronger tendency
of juveniles to copying habits of adult bird. As they picked to peck at
familiar food of adult –figs, also able to replicate feeding style as wipes the
seeds on a branch while feeds on fig mash and sometimes, probably also copying
the feeding tendency of adult bird to feed juvenile birds.
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