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Saw no less then three of these birds late yesterday afternoon.

A male, female and a juvenile with a seemingly "tailess" appearance. Is the tailess appearance normal for the young birds? It nearly resembled that of a crombec.

I have to say that I am dissapointed in Sasol 3's illustration of the female and juvenile birds. It makes no mention of the black throat.

This female amethyst sunbird is settling down in her nest with three chicks. Amazing to me was the fact that they actually overnight IN the nest with the chicks!

I agree with WTM about the incorrect representation of the dark throat patch one can clearly see here. Newman's looks more like the real thing though...

Have a close-up look at the materials used to construct the nest! It is a jumble of newspaper, raffia, string, bits of plastic. In fact, very little natural material can be discerned in the nest. There is little evidence of weaving in the construction of the nest. The nest seems to be held together by a form of glue. I wonder if nectar could serve this purpose?

We observed the parents feeding the chicks on INSECTS prior to bedding down for the night! Obviously they develop their sweet tooth much later in life!

That is such an interesting pic of the bird in its nest Johan.

Thanks, Elsa.

Not often one gets such pix opportunity. I kind of abused the privilege a bit, I think. The lady in question did not seem to be concerned though.

I know many birds use nature's strongest binding item... spiderweb to keep their nests together with. Perhaps these lil birds do that as well.

Hi heres a Sunbird, which might be an Amethyst? Because there
was a male Amethyst sunbird working the same place, but it doesn't
match up with our pictures in Sasol, any idea?
It was at Oyster bay lodge near Port Elizabeth in February.



and heres a link to it
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22594688@N08/3082542831/

Hey Neil,

Dont see whether there's any purple tinge on the throat, so I would ID this as a female Amethyst Sunbird.. Of the other 7 species found there, none look quite so distinctive on the chest. Nice photo!

Saw today that we have a pair of these nesting in the fir-type tree (never yet made the effort to find out exactly what it is) in the front garden. Heard them chattering and flying, and then saw the nest high up, must be about 10 meters. So I won't be able to get such a nice photo as Johan's, if at all with my aim-'n-shoot. But one can really see spring is herer with all the birds...

Male taken in Nylstroom yesterday.

Pretoriuskop. August 2010