The Sunbird is a small and delicate bird in the rainforest, less than ten centimeters long from the tip of its beak to the tip of its tail, with a clear and elegant call, and brilliant plumage, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet, as if it were woven with the seven colors of sunlight.
Whenever the forest is filled with sunshine, the sunbird flies to the brilliant mountain flowers, flapping its wings at a frequency of more than eighty times per second, its body moored in the air like a helicopter, its long, thin, needle-sharp beak piercing into the stamens and sucking nectar.
Behind Mangguanglangzhai there is a clear and bright stream, beside which there is a branching wild mango tree full of sunbirds, like a kingdom of sunbirds. On almost every branch, a few inches apart, there is an elaborate nest made of grass silk and clay. When they go out to feed en masse in the morning, the sky looks like a magnificent rainbow; when they perch among the branches at dusk and peck up the crystalline stream to comb their feathers, the canopy looks like a colorful tent.
As a youth from Shanghai, I did farm work with the local farmers and usually went hunting with them. That afternoon, after planting rice seedlings, I went to the stream to take a bath. It was the season for sunbirds to hatch their eggs, and the wild mango trees were alive with the sound of birds, the males flying in and out, busy feeding the females incubating their eggs in their nests.
I had just washed my hair when I suddenly heard the birds' panicked chirping coming from the wild mango tree, and when I looked up, I was almost scared out of my wits that a king cobra was climbing a staircase like a staircase up a branch to the crown of the tree. The king cobra can be said to be the king of the forest, with a body length of six meters, a pair of black heart on a white background painted on the back of the neck with a pair of spectacle-like markings, strong body force, wandering in the grass as if flying, as long as it meets with something alive, it will not hesitate to take the initiative to attack. Not to mention birds, rabbits and other small animals, or tigers, leopards see it, will also retreat. If a person is bitten by a king cobra, he will die within an hour.
I hurriedly hid under a clump of giant bananas, plucked a hole in the banana leaf, and peeped secretly.
The king cobra climbed high into the tree, its tail wrapped between the branches, the lower half of its body dropping down, the upper half of its body erect, its bright red snake's letter probing into a bird's nest, from top to bottom, sucking the eggs. Oval crystal clear bird eggs, as if by a strong suction pulling, lined up one by one, gurgling along the slender snake letter rolled into the snake's mouth, that part of the dashing, as if we use a straw to suck milk.
All the sunbirds incubating their eggs swarmed out of their nests, and the males out feeding flew in from all directions, gathering more and more by the thousands, blocking out a large patch of sunlight. Some flew over and skimmed the canopy, while others were moored in mid-air, staring angrily at the king cobra, wailing in panic.
Alas, the poor little birds, this pile of eggs is considered to be in vain, such a delicate life, is unable to fight with the king cobra, the most they can do is to take advantage of the flight, at a safe distance from the futile abuse, meaningless protests. Alas, nature never sympathizes with the weak.
The king cobra is still sucking on the bird's eggs, and is showing a disdainful contempt for such a large group of sunbirds: what's the point of having a lot of birds, it's just an unbeatable bunch!
In a few moments, the nests in the canopy on the left were swept away, and the greedy snake's head turned to the canopy on the right.
Just then, a sunbird with a forked tail, like a tuxedo, that had been moored in mid-air parallel to the king cobra, suddenly flew high and, with a long "tee-hee-hee" and a convergence of its wings, swooped down toward the snake's head. Its intention must have been to peck the snake's eyes with its needle-like thin beak, but when it flew to a meter away from the snake's head, the king cobra suddenly opened its mouth, a big mouth! It could have swallowed a coconut in a single gulp without any difficulty, and its black mouth seemed to have a powerful magnetic force, so the fork-tailed sunbird's wings were deflected, and it crashed headlong into the snake's mouth.
I don't know how the fork-tailed sunbird dared to hit the stone with the egg, maybe it is a brave sunbird by nature, or maybe it is a female bird, who happened to see the king cobra's snake's letter probing into its nest, out of a kind of maternal instinct, and hoped that her hard-earned eggs would be saved from being poisoned, so she fought with the king cobra with her own life.
Instead of saving its eggs, it lost itself, which is pathetic, I thought.
However, the many sunbirds seemed to think differently, and Fork-tail's behavior became an example, a model, a demonstration. The moment the forked tail was swallowed by the snake's beak, one bird after another elevated and swooped down towards the ugly snake's head, and naturally, they were moths to the flame and took their own lives; they were invariably sucked into the abyss-like belly of the snake. The king cobra probably enjoyed such an automatic meal for the first time in its life, shaking its head in delight, its snake's letters dancing with unusual enthusiasm and excitement, as if to say: come on, more is better, my stomach is just empty!
In a particular atmosphere, heroic behavior and the spirit of sacrifice will spread contagiously, almost all the sunbirds, gathered to the front of the king cobra, scrambling to be the first to rise, two or three in a row in a row towards the snake's head to swoop down continuously, the hole between the snake's beak and the sky, as if pulling a tugging colorful ribbon ......
I didn't count how many sunbirds filled the snake's belly, maybe a few hundred, maybe a thousand, gradually, the king cobra's deflated belly rumbled up, it probably ate too much and a little bit of appetite, or the stomach is too swollen and unwilling to eat again, closed the snake's mouth. But two sunbirds swooped down on the snake's face and pecked its glassy eyeballs with their needle-like beaks. I saw that the king cobra trembled a little, the neck and ribs expanded abruptly, the neck like a bird wing-like fluffy open, it must have been stung by the pain, was enraged by the cobra swish a shake of the neck, a bite bite dare to peck its eyeballs of the two sunbirds, demonstration-like towards the flock of birds shaking.
The sunbirds were not deterred, but intensified their attack, flying in groups of three or five, like rain, onto the snake's head. They seemed to know that the snake's eyes, which have no eyelids and therefore can't be closed, are the only weak point on the king cobra's body, so they specialized in pecking and biting at the two snake's eyes. In a short time, the king cobra eye sockets will gush out the blood, it is finally a little bit unable to resist the flock of birds defiant attack, close the neck and ribs, put away the arrogance, the snake's head down, along the trunk of the tree want to sneak down the tree. At this time, a large group of sunbirds swarmed up, staring at the snake's head and pecking. King Cobra's body twitching, as if suffering from epilepsy, the snake's tail a loose, from the high canopy fell down, thud, fell half dead. The dense flock of birds, following with a roar, descended to low altitude and swooped down on the snake. I couldn't see the snake anymore, only a writhing, bouncing mass tightly wrapped up by the birds. As the king cobra struggled and tumbled, layers of birds were crushed to death, and more birds swooped down after them.......
Finally, the king cobra, which is so vicious and fierce that even tigers and leopards would have to retreat, went limp like a piece of rotten grass rope.
The ground was covered with a layer of dead sunbirds, and the fallen flowers were so colorful that it was like a rain of flowers.
Oh, beautiful sunbirds, delicate little lives, brave little elves.