Page:The Common Birds of Bombay.djvu/83

Rh and called a Flowerpecker (Dicæum minimum), but it has none of the splendid colours of the Sunbirds. It is, indeed, a bird of the humblest aspect, of a uniform grayish-greenish colour, only paler on the underparts, with a very short beak and tail and nothing striking or remarkable about it, except this, that it is quite the smallest bird to be seen in Bombay. By this it may be recognised, and by its fussiness, for it appears to be charged with an importance quite out of proportion to its size. It is always bustling about and uttering its one note, chick, chick, chick, in a very loud voice. It is said to feed upon minute insects and flowerbuds, but I do not recollect that I ever saw it eating anything except the soft, yellow berries of the so-called "Mistletoe" (Loranthus), which burdens and half kills all our old mango trees. Of course it must sometimes eat other things, but I do not think you will find the bird far from the plant.

By its nest the Flowerpecker is a Sunbird. I can remember still the delight with which I first beheld that truly exquisite piece of workmanship. In its general plan it is the same as the nest of the Sunbird, a purse, with the entrance at one side, hung at the end of a branch; but there is a difference in the idea that the two birds work up to. The Sunbird, trusting to a bare-faced fraud, almost courts observation, while the simple-minded Flowerpecker seeks concealment. It discards all superfluities, builds a compact little structure of silk cotton and other fibres, hardly larger than a duck's egg, and hides it among overhanging leaves. I am sure also that it chooses a site, if possible, near to a colony of vicious red ants. It eludes their notice in some of those mysterious ways known