New Food Item for the Mugimaki Flycatcher Ficedula mugimaki
The diet of the Mugimaki Flycatcher is not well known but it includes small invertebrates, seeds and fruit (Clement 2020; Wells 2007). When on migration I have observed it take small insects, fruit and seeds. Feeding is often by an aerial sally with a ‘snatch-and-grab’ technique.
In the past I have seen the Mugimaki Flycatcher feed on the fruit/seeds of the:
1. Macaranga bancana (Common Mahang) – fruit.
2. Macaranga gigantea (Giant Mahang) – fruit.
3. Acacia mangium – arils and seeds.
4. Trema orientale (also called Trema orientalis) – fruit.
5. Commersonia bartramia (Brown Kurrajong, Scrub Christmas Tree) – seeds, possibly arils.
I have also seen them picking items off a bamboo seed inflorescence – possibly small invertebrates/insects.
On 25 November 2024 at the at the Kledang Saiong Forest Reserve, Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia, I observed a number of Mugimaki Flycatcher feeding on the seeds of the Mallotus macrostachyus (Kayu kapit) (see images 1-2). The fruit of this tree is hairy and large at 1-1.5cm but when it breaks open the exposed seeds are 3-4mm. The fruit was taken by a hover-snatch or a rapid aerial sally flyby snatch; always returning to a different perch. The birds were feeding competitively and the adult male chased away females and a first year bird.
At one point a lowland mixed foraging party of birds came through and a few Hume’s White-eye Zosterops auriventer also fed on the seeds (see image 3) – also a new food item for the species. The bird wave included a larger flycatcher, possibly a female Pale Blue Flycatcher Cyornis unicolor that also participated in the feeding (no images).
References
1. Clement, P. (2020). Mugimaki Flycatcher (Ficedula mugimaki), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie, and E. de Juana, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA.
2. Wells, D.R. (2007). The Birds of the Thai-Malay Peninsula: Vol. 2 (Passerines). London: Christopher Helm.
