Route 62 - Barrydale
Barrydale, the perfect weekend getaway on Route 62. A beautiful 2½ hour drive from Cape Town. We offer a marvelous selection of accommodation, restaurants and delightfully different shops.
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Written by Dr. Terry Oatley
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Tuesday, 01 December 2009 10:10 |
 The hot and dry summer season is a testing time for fynbos plant and animal life, and some of the Sugarbirds so common in the Tradouw Pass move into the village for the duration, settling down near some rich source of nectar such as an Australian Bottlebrush or Chinese Trumpet Flower vine. They spend most of their time out of sight in the cover of a thickly foliaged tree, rasping and chattering their characteristic sugarbird ‘song’. Our first sugarbird arrival this summer was on 18 November, a young male that promptly took possession of our feeder and quickly became a tyrant, chasing away the Malachite and Amethyst Sunbirds. It seems since to have learnt that there is plenty of sugar water for all, and is now somewhat more prepared to share.
The Cape Sugarbird of the winter rainfall region and Gurney’s Sugarbird (which ranges from the Eastern Cape to the Chimanimani Mtns in southeastern Zimbabwe) are both endemic to southern Africa. Their ancestral origin has long puzzled ornithologists...
Linnaeus first described the Cape Sugarbird in 1758, the bird’s size and long, curved beak persuading him that it was a bee-eater, so he named it Merops cafer. It was later realized, however, that this was no bee-eater, and the species was renamed Promerops (= like a bee-eater), and it has subsequently been placed in its own, distinct family, the Promeropidae.
Initially, its resemblance to birds of the Australian Honey-eater family Meliphagidae led to suggestions that it mighty be related to them, unlikely though this seemed to be. In 1974, studies of egg-white proteins led to the proposal that sugarbirds were derived from starlings. This seemed plausible, given the shape of the bird’s head and its raspy song. In 1981, however, anatomical studies revealed that sugarbirds possessed a structure on the syrinx known as the ‘Turdine thumb’, previously thought to occur only in the thrush family. So, theory No. 3 – the sugarbird is an aberrant thrush! Then, in the 1990’s, bird ringers co-operated in a blood-parasite survey by collecting blood smears from the birds they caught and ringed. Lots of birds have protozoan blood parasites, but the ones found in blood smears from some Lydenburg sugarbirds had never previously been found anywhere in Africa, though they are common in Australia – in honey-eaters!
So, next time you spot a sugarbird, ask yourself which theory of origin you prefer – starling, thrush, or Aussie honey-eater? |
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