Earlier posts: 1. Introduction; 2. Dangling nesting materials; 3. Nest taking shape.
By the afternoon of day three (4th January) of nest building, the wall of the egg chamber was properly reinforced with more nesting materials (below). The female Scarlet-backed Flowerpecker (Dicaeum cruentatum) had at last completed the basic nest structure.
The 3 hours of video surveillance still showed only the female flowerpecker doing all the work. She made a total of 62 visits and he only 2. On average, she made 20 visits per hour, mostly bringing plant floss to line the egg chamber (below).
The 2 visits by the male was to have a brief look (below). The smallness of the bird as well as its rapid movements made it difficult to monitor his presence during the visits by the female. He may well be in the background as the sharp calls were often heard.
Everytime the female brought floss, she entered the nest chamber to arrange it, moving around probably to shape the chamber.
At 1:28 minutes of the edited video below, when the female arrived with more floss, the call of the male was clearly heard. The male was nearby keeping in contact with the female. It took the female about 30 seconds to complete adding her floss onto to the inner wall of the chamber before emerging. At that exact time the male appeared, to accompany the female flying out.
The next visit by the female saw her staying inside the nest for a prolonged period of nearly 6 minutes before leaving, the longest time ever. Was she testing the comfort of the lining to decide whether there was enough floss on the inner wall?
YC Wee
Singapore
8th January 2018
