Behaviour
The painted berrypeckers are common, active, and diurnal birds. They usually occur in pairs or in small groups, up to 30 Tit Berrypeckers or 10 Crested Berrypeckers. The Crested Berrypecker flocks are occasionally joined by mixed-species feeding flocks of insectivorous birds such as fantails, honeyeaters and the Blue-capped Ifrit, and Tit Berrypeckers often join other bird species such as honeyeaters and birds of paradise in feeding trees.
As far as is known, the painted berrypeckers are almost entirely frugivorous. Small fruits and berries comprise the biggest part of the diet, although the Tit Berrypecker has also been recorded eating small flowers. The Crested Berrypecker has also been observed to occasionally eat insects, and insects as well as fruit comprise the diet of nestlings.
The breeding behaviour of both painted berrypeckers is poorly known. Both species are monogamous, and are thought to be seasonal, with the Tit Berrypecker apparently nesting in the tail end of the dry season and early wet season. The Crested Berrypecker breeds from August to February. The nests of both species are open cups built from moss. Beyond that nothing is known of the Tit Berrypecker. In the Crested Berrypecker the female alone incubates the eggs, with the incubation period lasting for over 12 days. Upon hatching both parents feed the chick and remove the faecal sacs.
Read more about this topic: Painted Berrypecker
Famous quotes containing the word behaviour:
“The methodological advice to interpret in a way that optimizes agreement should not be conceived as resting on a charitable assumption about human intelligence that might turn out to be false. If we cannot find a way to interpret the utterances and other behaviour of a creature as revealing a set of beliefs largely consistent and true by our standards, we have no reason to count that creature as rational, as having beliefs, or as saying anything.”
—Donald Davidson (b. 1917)
“... into the novel goes such taste as I have for rational behaviour and social portraiture. The short story, as I see it to be, allows for what is crazy about humanity: obstinacies, inordinate heroisms, “immortal longings.””
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“When we read of human beings behaving in certain ways, with the approval of the author, who gives his benediction to this behaviour by his attitude towards the result of the behaviour arranged by himself, we can be influenced towards behaving in the same way.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)