Legge's flowerpecker

The Legge's flowerpecker or white-throated flowerpecker (Dicaeum vincens) is a small passerine bird. It is an endemic resident breeder in Sri Lanka. It is named after the Australian ornithologist William Vincent Legge.[2]

Legge's flowerpecker
A male on the grounds of the Blue Magpie Lodge, Sri Lanka
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Passeriformes
Family: Dicaeidae
Genus: Dicaeum
Species:
D. vincens
Binomial name
Dicaeum vincens
(Sclater, 1872)

The Legge's flowerpecker is a common resident breeding bird of forests and other well-wooded habitats including gardens. Two eggs are laid in a purse-like nest suspended from a tree.

Description
D. vincens male and female above compared with Dicaeum melanozanthum below.

This is a very small passerine but a relatively stout flowerpecker, measuring 10 cm (3.9 in) in total length and weighing approximately 9 g (0.32 oz),[3] with a short tail, short thick curved bill and tubular tongue. The latter features reflect the importance of nectar in its diet, although berries, spiders and insects are also taken.

The male Legge's flowerpecker has blue-black upperparts, a white throat and upper breast, and yellow lower breast and belly. The female is duller, with olive-brown upperparts.

In Culture

In Sri Lanka, this bird is known as Lanka Pilachcha in Sinhala. This bird appears in a one rupee Sri Lankan postal stamp.[4]

References
  1. BirdLife International (2012). "Dicaeum vincens". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2012. Retrieved 26 November 2013.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  2. Beolens, Bo & Michael Watkins (2003) Whose Bird?: Men and women commemorated in the common names of birds, Christopher Helm, London.
  3. Mammides, C., Chen, J., Goodale, U. M., Kotagama, S. W., Sidhu, S., & Goodale, E. (2015). Does mixed-species flocking influence how birds respond to a gradient of land-use intensity? Proc. R. Soc. B, 282(1811), 20151118.
  4. http://www.birdtheme.org/country/srilanka.html
  • Birds of India by Grimmett, Inskipp and Inskipp, ISBN 0-691-04910-6
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