It’s an easy sound to miss, but if you stop and listen carefully, you’ll always hear the “tink…tink…tink…tink” of a Lesser Honeyguide calling from a favourite tree-top perch. Fairly drab to look at, the Honeyguides are a group of birds which are famous for leading certain animals, including man, to beehives, where the predator breaks open the nest to take the honey, and the bird benefits by feeding on wax, honey and larvae after the main predator has moved on.
I found this Lesser Honeyguide feeding on an exposed bee-hive hanging from a tree branch. There were no bees in sight, but the reverse side of the nest was full of honey, so they must have only moved on very recently, perhaps because of a couple of nights of very heavy rain that we’ve had this week.
