Garden Sunbird

The olive-backed sunbird, now called the garden sunbird in its narrower sense, is a small, brightly coloured bird 10–11.4 cm long, males weighing 6.7–11.9 g and females 6–10 g. It has olive-green plumage on the wings and back with a bright yellow chest and a long downward-curved bill used for taking nectar and capturing insects. The male of the nominate form has an olive upper body, black wing feathers with green edges and a black tail with white tips, with dark iridescent lores, neck, chin, throat and breast and yellow pectoral tufts (Wikipedia, general species account).

The species was formerly considered conspecific with seven other species, and the account used here describes the narrowly defined garden sunbird of the Philippines, so the wider olive-backed sunbird of Southeast Asia is treated by it as separate forms. It is primarily nectarivorous but takes insects and spiders, particularly when feeding chicks, and the nest is a hanging oval pouch with a sheltered side opening, often with a dangling beard (Wikipedia, general species account).