Fire-breasted flowerpecker

Dicaeum ignipectus

TAXONOMY

Myzante ignipectus Blyth, 1843, Nepal and Bhutan. Seven sub-species.

OTHER COMMON NAMES

English: Buff-bellied flowerpecker; French: Dicée à gorge feu; German: Feuerbrust-Mistelfresser; Spanish: Pica Flor de Lomo Verde.

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

3.5 in (8.9 cm); 0.14–0.28 oz (4–8 g). Black crown and upper-parts with dark brown cheek, scarlet breast, and buff throat and belly.

DISTRIBUTION

D. i. apo: Mindanao and Negros; D. i. beccarii: Sumatra; D. i. bonga: Samar in the Philippines; D. i. cambodianum: Cambodia, northeast and southeast Thailand; D. i. dolichorhynchum: peninsular Malaysia; D. i. formosum: Taiwan; D. i. ignipectum: Kashmir,

northeast India, Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, northern Myanmar, northern Indochina, southern China, southeast Tibet.

HABITAT

Montane forests, oak woodlands, rhododendrons, and cultivations up to 12,950 ft (3,950 m).

BEHAVIOR

Active at tops of trees. Joins parties and mixed-species flocks in nonbreeding season.

FEEDING ECOLOGY AND DIET

Nectar, fruits and berries of mistletoes, insects, and spiders.

REPRODUCTIVE BIOLOGY

Two or three white eggs are laid in a purse-shaped nest made of vegetable material including rootlets, grass, and moss kept together with cobwebs and suspended in a tree 10–29 ft (3–9 m) up.

CONSERVATION STATUS

Not threatened.

SIGNIFICANCE TO HUMANS

None known.