The genus Arachnechthra is characterised by a great difference in appearance between the sexes. The hens of all the species are very like one another; all are homely-looking birds, dull greenish brown above and pale yellow below. The cocks of the various species are arrayed in metallic colours as resplendent as those that decorate humming birds.
Seen from a little distance, the cock of the purple-rumped species is a bird with dark head, neck, wings, back, and tail, and bright yellow under parts, while the female is brown above and yellowish beneath. Thus at a distance the male does not look much more beautiful than the female, but if one is able to creep up sufficiently near him his plumage is seen to be unsurpassable; it glistens with a splendid metallic sheen, which is purple or green according to the direction from which the sun’s rays fall upon it. On the top of the head is a patch of brilliant shining metallic green, which exceeds in beauty any crown devised by man.
The cocks of the purple and Loten’s species are very much alike, but may be readily distinguished by the fact that the slender curved bill of Loten’s is considerably longer than that of its cousin. How shall I describe these beautiful birds? In my volume Indian Birds I classed them among black birds, because they look black when seen at a distance, but I stated that they are in reality dark purple, and have been taken to task for not classing them among the blue birds. The fact of the matter is that these birds cannot be said to be of any colour; like shot silk, their hue depends upon the angle at which the sun’s rays fall upon them. In the sunlight their plumage glistens like a new silk hat, and sometimes the sheen looks lilac and at others green.
The habits of all three species appear to be exactly alike.
The cocks of all have fine voices. At his best the purple sunbird sings as sweetly as a canary. Indeed, on one occasion when I was staying at Bangalore I heard a bird singing in the verandah which I thought was a caged canary; it was only when I went to look at the canary that I discovered it to be a wild sunbird pouring forth its music from some trellis-work!
Sunbirds are always literally bubbling over with energy. They are bundles of vivacity—ever on the move. Although they eat tiny insects, they subsist chiefly on the nectar of flowers, which appears to be a most stimulating diet.
Sunbirds have long, slender, curved bills and tubular tongues, hence they are admirably equipped to secure the honey hidden away in the calyces of flowers. As the little birds insert their heads into the blossoms they get well dusted with pollen, so that, like bees and some other insects, they probably play an important part in the cross-fertilisation of flowers; but they do not hesitate to probe the sides of large flowers with their sharp bills, and thus secure the honey without bearing pollen to the stigma. It is pretty to watch the sunbirds feeding. They are as acrobatic as titmice and strike the most extraordinary attitudes in their attempts to procure honey. When there is no convenient point d’appui they hover like humming birds, on rapidly vibrating wings, and while so doing explore with their long tongues the recesses of honeyed flowers. To quote Aitken, “between whiles they skip about, slapping their sides with their tiny wings, spreading their tails like fans, and ringing out their cheery refrain. As they pass from one tree to another they traverse the air in a succession of bounds and sportive spirals.” Verily the existence of a sunbird is a happy one!
The nest of the sunbird is one of the most wonderful pieces of architecture in the world, and it is the work of the hen alone. While she is working like a Trojan, her gay young spark of a husband is drinking riotously of nectar! The nest is a hanging one, and is usually suspended from a branch of a bush or a tree, and not infrequently from the rafter of the verandah of an inhabited bungalow; sunbirds show little fear of man.
The nest is commenced by cobwebs being wound round and round the branch from which the nest will hang. Cobweb is the cement most commonly employed by birds. To this pieces of dried grass, slender twigs, fibres, roots, or other material are added and made to adhere by the addition of more cobweb.
The completed nest, which usually hangs in a most conspicuous place, often passes for a small mass of rubbish that has been pitched into a bush, and, in view of the multifarious nature of the material used by the sunbird, there is every excuse for mistaking the nursery for a ball of rubbish. Grasses, fibres, fine roots, tendrils, fragments of bark, moss, lichen, petals or sepals of flowers, in short, anything that looks old and untidy is utilised as building material.