British birds sipping nectar?

[Biomotors]

Yesterday I saw a male blackcap on our red hot poker (Kniphofia uvaria). He was holding onto the flower stalk and poking his beak up into the flowers, so it looked like he was sipping the nectar from the flowers. I didn't know any british birds did that. Do they do that often?

(I was never a great fan of red hot poker, but I am now!!!)

Thanks
Dominic

[Fieldfare95]

I've never seen it myself but I'm sure there was once a thread on here about greenfinches nipping off flower heads to get at the nectar.

[Tursiops2]

Interesting. It may be he was after pollen (high protein, energy-rich food) or insects in the flowers. Sparrows often raid flowers like Kniphofia for pollen, ending up with orange staining all over their faces.
T2

[cutecoot]

Originally Posted by Tursiops2

Sparrows often raid flowers like Kniphofia for pollen, ending up with orange staining all over their faces.
T2

My mum used to have a beautiful forsythia bush .. which only looked beautiful once, because every other year was completely decimated by sparrows pecking off the flowers for the nectar. They used to do the same to the flowers on my cherry tree too ... they seem to peck them from the back somehow, so that the flowers drop off, rather than just sticking their beaks into the centre of the flower itself.

[sometimes]

I think the critical question is whether it was going at the parts that were still red or the bits that had faded at the bottom. Great tits and blue tits systematically attack the 'bottom going up' of my red hot pokers, they don't touch the flowers but the white 'dead' flowers below. i presume they are taking the developing seeds.

[valleyforge]

Hi Biomotors,

I'm not enough of a botanist to know if red-hot pokers contain anything akin to nectar ... or infact anything nutritious at all ... but it's certainly not uncommon to observe birds of a wide variety of species drinking droplets of rainwater or dew from foliage.

Could that not be an alternative, and simpler, explanation of what you saw ... the dense flowerhead of the 'poker' perhaps being more retentive of moisture than surrounding plants?

[bobbarber]

that was my first thought valleyforge, perhaps Biomotors could tell us what time of the day it was and if there was any dew...Bob

[aeshna5]

Red Hot Pokers are of African origin where they are naturally pollinated by various species of sunbirds. Many red flowers are bird pollinated- often hummingbirds in the Americas, honeyeaters in Australasia + sunbirds in warmer parts of Asia/ Africa.

I've seen House Sparrows + Blue Tits (partial to Mahonia in my garden) in the UK + when I was in Eilat saw many Blackcaps + Lesser Whitethroats doing this ina large red Bottlebrush, Callistemon citrinus.

[Biomotors]

It was about 2pm, so definitely not dew, and I am pretty sure it was poking into the nice red flowers. It had so much the stance of a humming bird taking nectar, I am pretty sure that is what it was doing. I'll keep my camera closer to hand next time.

Thanks to everyone for all the possible explanations!

Dominic.