Orange-bellied Leafbird

The orange-bellied leafbird is a bird native to the central and eastern Himalaya, Yunnan and northern parts of Southeast Asia. It is brightly coloured with an orange belly, a green back, a blue tail and flight feathers, and a black and blue patch over the throat and chest, with a long, curved bill. The greyish-crowned leafbird of Hainan is again considered conspecific, and the scientific name commemorates the English naturalist Thomas Hardwicke (Wikipedia, general species account).

It feeds on insects, spiders and nectar, and makes its nests from roots and fibres suspended from the edges of twigs at the end of a tree branch. SoIB 2023 rates it a Moderate conservation priority, a resident and altitudinal migrant forest bird that eats fruit and nectar, with a Moderate range of about 147,000 km² and a current decline of about 4% a year (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).