h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have a huge bee's nest in my garden. It's not in a hive or in a hollow tree, it's just hanging naked (except when there are enough bees to cover it) underneath the branches of a tree. I try to not call attention to it too much because some people might consider it a hazard in a residential area, but I warn all visitors and the gardener is OK with it as well. So far I've been stung a few times while watering the garden but nobody else as far as I'm aware of. At the moment there are very few bees ... perhaps because of the cold ... and so most of the nest is exposed.

Anyways, the bees visit my flowers, and in turn also provide food for ...

Honeyguides!

Honeyguides are extremely interesting birds. They look very much like songbirds, but actually are Piciforms - the group of near-songbirds that include woodpeckers, toucans and a few others. While songbirds have three toes that point forwards and one that points backward, piciforms have two toes forward and two back. Woodpeckers especially benefit from this arrangement because it gives them more stability when clambering up or down trees. In the other piciforms the toes are like that possibly simply because of it being the ancestral arrangement for the whole group, the woodpeckers merely having found a special way to exploit it.

Piciforms also have less complex singing muscles than songbirds, and don't have complex songs but many kinds have characteristic calls. Honeyguides included. The two local species - the Greater or Black-throated (Indicator indicator) and Lesser (Indicator minor) both have very recognisable calls - which they repeat for hours on end. Typically they have a very specific perch that they keep permanently - one bird I knew to be sitting and calling in a particular wild fig tree in our local game reserve, and I could count on it to be sitting there and calling whenever I visited the reserve, no matter what time of day, no matter what time of year.

The fun thing is that both these honeyguide species occur in my suburb and both of them visit my garden! The greater I see less of the time, but hear all of the time. We've had a bee's nest in an old box that we intended for woodpeckers or barbets (also piciforms) but then the bees moved in. Soon we saw the honeyguide around the nest. Sadly because our then-gardener didn't like the situation we had to remove the bees, and then for long I didn't see honeyguide. Except for when one of them somehow got into my room! I have no idea why it flew in my bedroom window, but I was awoken by a fluttering, saw the bird, and only upon catching it realised what it was. It was a juvenile (which looks quite different from the adults) but I instantly knew what it was. It was a very strange and unusual experience. Of all the common birds that could have landed themselves in my room ... a honeyguide (it was only the second one that I actually had seen in my life up till then) was the last thing I expected.

And now with the bee's nest, the lesser honeyguide is visiting my garden very frequently. I've seen it several times when approaching that corner of the garden. It is shy and flies off the moment I'm too close but even in flight it is easy to recognise, because it has two white outer-tail feathers that it flashes as a kind of visual signal. Today however I managed to creep up on it. Actually there were two this time, and I was able to watch them nibbling at the hanging wax honeycombs using my binoculars.

Yes - honeyguides are the only birds that can digest bee's wax. Thus whether the cells are filled with bee grubs, or with honey, or with nothing - the honeyguide always has something that it can eat! The two honeyguides I watched did not slow the slightest fear of the bees. They apparently have thick skins impervious to bee stings.

Also WHILE those two were feasting, in the distance I could hear a GREATER honeyguide calling.

In Nature honeyguides have a reputation for leading humans to bee's nests. The humans, recognising the characteristic calls, will follow the honeyguide to the enst, will remove honey and will in reward leave a few pieces of comb with honey or grubs for the honeyguides. Sadly this practice is dying out as more and more people in Africa have access to table sugar. Stories about honeyguides leading animals like badgers to bee's nests are controversial. A scence of this happening during the Jamie Uys movie '(Animals Are) Beautiful People' was totally faked (with a fake bird dangling from a string on a stick, shots of birds that aren't even honeyguides, and badgers raiding bee's nests which they do on their own anyways).

Also, honeyguides are parasitic birds like cuckoos:

http://h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/brunel/A87756844

But they are the most parasitic birds of all. While many members of the cuckoo family are NOT parasitic, ALL known species of honeyguides are. They all lay their eggs in the nests of other birds - mostly hole nesters, often their fellow piciforms like barbets and woodpeckers. And their chicks are the most murderous of all. While some parasitic bird chicks grow up alongside the chicks of their 'foster parents', most cuckoo chicks will chuck out the other eggs, but honeyguide chicks will actually bite the other chicks in their nest to death with special hooks on their bills, that drop off when this task is done.

There also is a kind of honeyguide that is one of the few bird species that produce 'calls' not using its vocal chords at all - or its lungs or anything having to do with what one would consider a voice. It creates weird sounds by air moving over its strangely shaped tail feathers as it flies. This one is called the lyre-tailed honeyguide because of the way the feathers splay outward and probably also for how it makes sound with it, and occurs in tropical Africa. Most honeyguides are African, only a couple of species living in Asia.

Jeepers! I've written an entry ... now I only need a painting or two! Honeyguides are rather drab and unassuming birds, I'll have to figure a way to doll the painting up a bit.

Fascinating stuff. Yes, definitely entry-worthy.

I just came over to thank you for Colours of Wildlife and read this, so thank you - twice!

Could you draw a Honeyguide in your garden, I think that would add interest for me, although I don't mind if a bird is 'dull and unassuming' I love them just the same

This is very interesting Willem, you are so lucky to know about the wildlife you see around you - otherwise I guess it would just escape your attention - or be taken for granted.

Did you study natural sciences at university, or are you a self-taught expert?

I'd only vaguely heard about honeyguides before, so yet again I've learned something today from reading your journals.

Thanks!

Lanzababy

Hello Dmitri, Peanut and Lanzababy, thanks for the comments. I will see about a little painting, I'll take a shot of the bee's nest close-up and add the honeyguide to it!

Lanzababy, I would have studied Zoology at University if it wasn't for the fact that I'd have to dissect animals which I wasn't prepared to do under any circumstances. So I studied physics, chemistry and mathematics instead. But I read as much as I could about just about every kind of animal and plant. And also I learnt a lot out in the wilderness with binoculars and camera and by trying to observe as much as possible.

In that case, I am doubly impressed. I know what you mean about the animal side of things, we had to do some of that throughout. I think nowadays students can watch videos, or virtual dissections and so forth. In my day it involved a lot of preserved specimens.


And you paintings? Your art is so professional, and obviously you are extremely gifted. I only wish I had a tenth of your talent. Did you have a teacher, or is this self-taught as well?

That would be a cool painting You are lucky to have a bee nest. I have had some solitary bees in my garden but I think over the last three years the ground has been just too water-logged or solid clay for it be suitable for nesting.

When the kids were little I got a paddling pool for the summer holidays, it was yellow and shaped like a flower, it proved a great attraction for bees, after an afternoon of bee rescue, we packed it up for the sake of the bees, and got a blue one, not shaped like a flower and they went back to their safe feeding/drinking stations

Hello again Lanzababy and Peanut, you both saw the preparation sketch I made for the honeyguide painting I'm intending to do. So anyways, I'll rectify the little details I didn't get quite right in the painting, I hope.

Great story about the bees being attracted to the pool, Peanut! Interesting about the solitary bees also. Over here I've got other kinds of bees in the garden as well, carpenter bees, they're huge and fuzzy, black with yellow or orange markings.

Anyways, Lanzababy, the art has been going on for long. I started when I was five years old. My father taught and inspired me from the start - he was very artistic as well, doing work in many media. I took extracurricular art classes in primary and high school ... didn't have art as a school subject, didn't like the way it was taught. Like I said, I didn't study it at University either, again because my idea of what I wanted to do artistically did not match what they were teaching. I sketched and painted a bit after university, but only got started for real in 1999-2000 when I decided once and for all I was going to make the art work. Other teachers I've had ... my dad and I took art classes at a lady living here close to where I live, but those didn't go so well. We also took oil painting classes under a guy who was a quite successful landscape artist, he's deceased now, those classes didn't work so well either. Currently I'm taking classes with Kathryn van Schalkwyk, an excellent artist who works mainly in watercolours. I enjoy these classes very much. I do the wildlife work in addition to the class projects. On that other site you'll see some of my class projects, such as still lifes, composition paintings, landscapes and so on. The classes are great for getting me to diversity a bit in terms of style and subject matter.