Cache & carry

The feeding and social behaviour of honeyguides

- PIERRE HENSBURG

If you have a bird-feeding site in your suburban or rural garden and live in a region where honeyguides occur, the pleasure you derive from your efforts can be greatly enhanced if you can secure a source of beeswax. With an uncanny ability to track down the presence of beeswax or honeycomb, a honeyguide will become a regular visitor to the garden, even if only an intermittent supply of this unusual food source is provided.

Not only are members of the honeyguide family (Indicatori-dae) typically considered to be the only African vertebrates capable of digesting wax derived from either honeycomb (honeyguides) or scale insects (honeybirds), they also have a few other unusual characteristics. All members are brood parasites and all are probably polygynous; hatchlings have hooked bills for killing the young of their hosts; and all members have zygodactylous feet. The Greater Honeyguide Indicator indicator is renowned for its remarkable cooperative relationship with human honey gatherers, honey badgers and baboons.

Being a hobbyist beekeeper gives me perhaps an above-average opportunity to witness the connection between these interesting birds and our all-important honey bees. Recent observations at the bee-feeding site in my East London forest-edge garden have shown me the feeding and social behaviour displayed by both immature and adult Greater and Lesser honeyguides. As the birds were not individually marked, I was unable to ascertain how many independent individuals of each species and age or sex class visited the feeding site, but my observations nonetheless suggested some interesting patterns.