The Varied Diet of the Yellow-vented Bulbul Chicks.

The Varied Diet of the Yellow-vented Bulbul Chicks. By Seng Alvin.

The ubiquitous Yellow-vented Bulbul Pycnonotus goiavier has to be the most common bird in our urban greenery. Its bubbly call is a welcome sound in our parks and gardens. If you listen carefully, they have different calls and alarms for different situations.

With two hungry chicks to feed, the parent bulbuls were kept busy throughout the day

I was lucky to come across a nesting pair at Pasir Ris Park this June and decided to document the food that the parents brought back to feed the chicks, and it was very varied.

Insects formed the main source of proteins for the growing chicks. Wasps from a nearby nest, a green grasshopper and a spider showed the variety of the feed.

My monitoring started on the 17th. I spent one to two hours each day between 8.00 am and 10 am photographing the the feeding process. Both chicks successfully fledged on the 22nd after a week of feeding.

Happy and well fed chicks about to fledge on the 22nd June.

For the first three days, the parents brought back soft and small insects that can be easily digested. Spiders and caterpillars were also a good source of proteins for the growing chicks. In the later stage, berries and figs supplemented larger insects like grasshoppers.

Squashed figs and berries will form the main diet of these frugivorous species when they grow up. 

In first part of the day, the parents will usually feed the chicks with insects. As the day progressed, they would start bringing back figs and berries to the chicks, for desserts? As there was a wasp’s nest nearby, they took full advantage of this ready source of rich protein insects. I wonder how do they neutralise the venom if any inside these wasps?

Sharing a fat caterpillar.

From my observations, their diet is not just varied but well balanced for the chicks to grow up as fast as possible to begin another generation.