Cheong Weng Chun sent me an image of a juvenile Asian Glossy Starling (Aplonis panayensis) with a bunch of young rain tree (Samanea saman) leaflets in its beak. And in his own words, the bird was: "chewing - no, can it chew or perhaps, I should say swallow?"
This started me asking a pertinent question "Do birds eat leave?" Well, some birds do... Anyway, I ended up with some interesting information.
Folivory applies to those birds that eat leaves, either exclusively or partially. Although a successful foraging strategy for numerous species, few birds are exclusively folivorous. Why? Because flight demands an enormous amount of energy and leaves do not provide the necessary energy. The energy content of leaves is only half that of fruits and a quarter that of insects and other arthropods. Also, leaf digestion is slow and requires a large storage space in the gut. Besides, digestion needs to be undertaken by specialized bacteria present in the gut
Those birds that regularly feed on leaves have thus turned to gliding or abandoned flight altogether.
Only about 3% of all birds, from at least 14 families, eat leaves regularly. Most of these birds are terrestrial or aquatic and only 5 families include aboreal members. From these 5 families only 2 species, Hoatzin (Opisthocomus hoazin) and Owl Parrot (Strigops habroptilus) obtain most of their energy from leaves. These include new growth of green leaves, buds, flowers and fruits in season, moss and fungi. Hoatzin is a South American bird whose flight is weak and awkward. It clumsily creeps up branches and make only short flights. The other is a flightless bird of New Zealand.
R. Subaraj notes that certain birds offer leaves during courtship, but we have an immature bird here. So does it mean that its behaviour is precocious?
Image by Cheong Weng Chun
hullo, i'm looking into folivory in Turacos and was wondering whether anyone has any information on that.
ReplyDeleteIn reply to your question, yes, birds do eat leaves. i've observed it among the members of the family musophagidae. the Great Blue Turaco, Ross's Turaco and Grey plantain eater regularly eat leaves. i think it's quite fascinating.
ReplyDeletevery interesting topic! - thanks to Weng Chun to share the information.
ReplyDeletebut is there any a thorough study about folivorous bird, and possible to freely accessed maybe?
Unfortunately there has not been any serious studies on this in the region, as far as I am aware.
ReplyDeleteWithin a hotel garden in Cancun, Mex. this February, we spotted at least two very dark birds, medium sized, up in a leafy tree eating leaves. We viewed them from below as they were over our heads in the trees. They seemed to have no distinguishing marks except for a large fanned tail, a smallish head and their dark grey, black body. No photo was taken. Reading some literature, could they have been red beaked pigeons? Another other choices?
ReplyDelete