ANIMALS
Sunbird songs are a million years old
WORDS YASEMIN SAPLAKOGLU
A double-collared sunbird is a tiny, colourful bird that resembles a hummingbird
A million years ago, the soundtrack of the ‘sky island’ mountains of East Africa may have been similar to what it is today. That’s because a group of tiny, colourful birds have been singing the exact same tunes for more than 500,000 years, maybe as long as a million years. Sunbirds in the family Nectariniidae are colourful, tiny, nectar-feeding birds that resemble hummingbirds and are common throughout Africa and Asia. They are “little jewels that appear before you,” said Rauri Bowie, a professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a curator in the school’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology.