52. Eastern Double-collared Sunbird Sunbird beaks or bills are ‘purpose built’ for getting nectar up from the depths of flowers. It slides sharply and easily down the flower’s ‘throat’ and the curve allows the bird to manipulate it to get the last few drops of the sugary liquid out. Does it have tiny muscles like ours, this tongue, to allow the bird to bend it around corners? I don’t know. Do they suck the nectar up, like a tiny elephant with a tiny trunk? Hardly: that beak is an upper and a lower mandible all the way up to the mouth, and I guess that it wouldn’t allow sufficient suction power to do the job. In fact, they have very long tongues which they flick down to the deepest part of the flower. At the ends of these tongues there are, depending on the type of sunbird, various brush- or barb-like protuberances to which the sticky nectar sticks. When the tongue is drawn back into the beak, the nectar is swallowed. This happens very fast: with binoculars, you can see the flicking, and sometime even the tongue moving. So: a quiz question: why is a sunbird like a chameleon? Birds of AFRICAMA House 108 Birds of AFRICAMA House 109