New Holland Honeyeater


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Remark by Chris Martin:
This can be a difficult one for foreigners to understand and I must admit all HONEYEATERS should be called NECTAREATERS. The only place that I know of where you will get honey is from a "bee-hive"! What the birds, animals and insects get from flowers is called NECTAR in this part of the world. In Australia, 67 honeyeater species occur.
The principal and most striking anatomical feature of the family is the brush-tipped tongue, which functions in the same way as a paint brush, collecting fluids (like nectar) by capillarity. Most honeyeaters can protrude their tongues well beyond their bill tips, enabling NECTAR collection from the base of long tubular flowers or honeydew extraction from deep narrow cracks in bark. Most can lap up these fluids at a rate of ten or more licks per second and can empty a flower in less than one second.

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