Main content

Vampire Finch

Miranda Krestovnikoff presents the blood sucking vampire finch.

Tweet of the Day is the voice of birds and our relationship with them, from around the world.

Miranda Krestovnikoff presents the blood sucking vampire finch. On Wolf Island in the remote Galapagos archipelago, a small dark finch sidles up to a booby with a taste for blood. Sharp-beaked ground finch is found on several islands in the Galapagos and is one of the family known as Darwin's finches. Several species of ground-finches have devolved bill sizes which vary depending on their diet and the competition for food. Usually seeds, fruits, nectar and grubs. But one sharp-beaked ground-finch has gorier ambitions. On the isolated islands of Wolf and Darwin where seeds are scarcer in times of drought this bird has taken to drinking the blood of other seabirds, especially boobies. It pecks at the bases of their feathers and greedily laps up the flowing blood. For this reason it's often known as the, the vampire finch.

Producer : Andrew Dawes

Available now

2 minutes

Last on

Tue 1 Nov 2022 05:58

Webpage image of Sharp-beaked ground-finch / Vampire finch (Geospiza difficilis)

Webpage image courtesy of Pete Oxford / naturepl.com.

漏 Pete Oxford / naturepl.com.

Recording of sharp-beaked ground-finch by Robert I Bowman / Ref: ML 86756

This programme contains a wildtrack 聽kindly provided by The Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology; recorded by Robert I Bowman on 07 Feb 1964, in Culpepper, Gal谩pagos, Ecuador.

Broadcasts

  • Fri 31 Oct 2014 05:58
  • Fri 30 Oct 2015 05:58
  • Fri 28 Jun 2019 05:58
  • Fri 9 Oct 2020 05:58
  • Tue 1 Nov 2022 05:58

Featured in...

Podcast: Planet Puffin

Podcast: Planet Puffin

Exploring all things puffin - the silly and the serious, the scientific and the cultural.

Try this new podcast

Five stories of birds and birdsong are told by the people inspired by them.

Podcast