BANANAQUIT BABIES ON ABACO: AWWWWWW…SOME BIRDS
I’m not generally into whimsy and such stuff BUT… I can’t get enough of small bananaquits (Coereba flaveola). I’ve featured them before HERE and HERE AGAIN, but then I see another one, take some photos, and awwwwww – look at its little fluffy feathers… and its tiny sharp claws! The two shown below are summer babies. They aren’t really babies, though, are they? Teenagers, more like. Like many Abaco birds – especially the parrots – they are keen on the fruit of the Gumbo Limbo tree Bursera simaruba shown here. They also love flowers, piecing the base with their beaks to get at the nectar. They are quite as happy on a feeder – or indeed sipping sugar water from a hummingbird feeder, living up to their nickname ‘sugar bird’.
This second bird is a bit older, and has developed some smart citrus lemon shoulder flashes. Bananaquits have many regional variations throughout the caribbean and beyond. These birds are, or were, generally lumped in with the tanager species. They have an official classification of ‘uncertain placement’ in the taxonomic scheme for now, while their exact status is debated. Not that anyone watching them worries about that sort of technicality.
Here is what a Bahamas bananaquit sounds like, recorded on Andros (Credit: Paul Driver at Xeno-Canto)
A pair of adult bananaquits
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Great name! 😀
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Bananaquit, you mean? It sounds a bit like an extremely faddy fruit-avoidance diet, though… RH
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I’m currently on a low carbohydrate diet, RH, and I don’t eat bananas. Maybe I should rename it the bananaquit diet! 😀
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Whooops! *Insensitive-use-of-word-‘faddy’ Alert*. Sorry about that. RH
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Dear RH,
thanks for your great pics of these sweet birds I have never seen before.
Enjoy the weekend
Klausbernd
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Hi Klausbernd, yes they are very attractive little things. They grow into elegant adults, but I like their bedraggled fluffy juvenile stage too – and they are very tame and inquisitive. Enjoy your weekend too! RH
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Lovely!
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Sweet, aren’t they. And invariably fairly tame and inquisitive, so they don’t fly away as soon as one approaches / moves a muscle! RH
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