Sunbirds | Nectariniidae

Honingzuigers | Suimangas

Small, sharp-featured birds with a thin curved bill and a tongue rolled into a tube at the tip and frayed at the very end, used to draw nectar from a flower as through a straw. Unlike the hummingbirds they resemble but are not related to, they almost always drink perched, clinging to the flower stem and hovering for at most a second. The glossy blue, green and purple of the males is not pigment but structural colour: layers within the feather that split the light, so that a turning bird flips from black to metal. Bright pectoral tufts sit at each side of the breast and are flicked out only in display or threat. The nest is a hanging purse of plant fibre and spider silk with a side entrance and a porch, built by the female alone.