Top PHOWNer Pieter Cronje visited the Seychelles from 9 to 15 March 2014, and uploaded over 100 PHOWN records for the Madagascar Fody. This species is found naturally in Madagascar but has been introduced to many other islands.

"I spent a week working on Mahe and on Saturday I spent 6 hours walking on Praslin near the airport and 3 hours by bicycle on La Dique. During this period I managed to map approximately 121 Madagascar Fody nests. Although I spotted many male fodies and therefore many more nests, it was impossible to access private homes. So most of the nests were mapped from the street.

During this process I encountered a few interesting things. Unlike some African species the Madagascar Fody nests are more difficult to find. The way to find the nests was to spot a male who was normally very vocal. The males are extremely territorial and were never far from their nests, chasing away any other male and female fodies from his nest. The males have only one nest. On all three islands the nests were away from each other and you rarely spotted two nests in the same tree or very close to each other, except for one very large Casuarina tree where I found two nests on separate sides of the same tree.

On Mahe Island I spotted a male fody collecting spider web (PHOWN 9139) which he used to connect some nest material to the palm leaf. This is something that I saw with the local sunbird in Seychelles who was also collecting spider web.

In another tree I saw a nest close to a wasp nest (PHOWN 9217). Most of the nests were built in a specific palm species and also in Casuarina trees although nests were also found in coconut palms and even banana trees."

See all the Madagascar Fody PHOWN records here.