Taman Rimba Kiara is a little green gem located in a corner of the TTDI residential area. The above flowering tree, the firmiana malayana or mata lembu, flashes in testimony to man's care-less-ness - it's one of only two trees in the park that had flowered, since then the tree had been chopped down.

Tuesday 14 May 2019

A fact about the Gerygone

Sightings of the Golden-bellied Gerygone in the taman are still far and few in between that when I did any, it still brought a sense of excitement, especially when the latest sighting was of a pair.  As usual, these small birds, almost the size of flowerpeckers, are not easy to shoot because of their continuous movements.  
And on this occasion, all I managed was of one only, but the great regret must be that this one came so low and close at one point even though it allowed mainly belly-shots, yet I lost those precious seconds of opportunity.






An interesting fact to note about this small bird of about 10cm is that it plays host to the parasite Little Bronze Cuckoo which is about 16cm, as in brood parasitism, i.e. the cuckoo will lay its eggs in the gerygone's nest and leave the gerygone to raise its chick to fledgling.

"Brood parasitism truly meets the definition of parasitism because the parasite benefits while the host is negatively affected. When the parasite bird lays her eggs, she gets rid of one or more of the host bird's eggs. In addition, the parasite bird eggs often hatch sooner and grow faster than the host bird, which means the parasite chick gets more of the resources. The parasite chicks will also sometimes kill the host chicks by pushing them out of the nest. 
You might be wondering, why do the host birds put up with this? Why don't they kick the parasite eggs out of the nest? In some cases, they actually do! Parasite birds and host birds are constantly evolving; the host birds develop defenses against the parasite birds, and the parasite birds develop ways to overcome these defenses. 
For example, when the host bird evolves to be able to recognize the parasite bird's eggs and remove them from the nest, the parasite bird evolves so that its eggs look exactly like those of the host bird. In other cases, the host bird leaves the parasite bird eggs in the nest because some species of birds simply can't see the difference between different types of eggs. They will raise whatever egg happens to be in their nest." (extract of study.com)
The Little Bronze Cuckoo is spotted in the taman from time to time:


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