Grey-sided Flowerpecker

The grey-sided flowerpecker is a tiny bird about 6 cm long and 4–8 g. Males have blue-black crown and upperparts, a scarlet throat and breast, greyish sides and a pale vent. Five geographic forms are recognised across the Sulawesi region, Talaud, Sangihe, Sula, Banggai and Wakatobi islands. Some authorities treat the Wakatobi population kuehni as a separate species, a view supported by published molecular and phenotypic research (Grzimek’s Animal Life Encyclopedia; Wakatobi flowerpecker study).

It is a diurnal fruit- and nectar-feeder using forest edge, secondary growth and farmland, chiefly from the lowlands to about 1,000 m. Ecological datasets report a three-egg clutch, although the opened synthesis did not provide a nest description or incubation period for direct checking. Its short-winged proportions are associated with limited dispersal, consistent with the differentiated island populations. The species also occurs in moist lowland and montane forest (Oiseaux.net synthesis; Wikipedia general and taxonomic account).