Nest
Cup-shaped, composed of fine bark and grasses bound with cobweb, occasionally wool or hair, lined with rootlets or wool, suspended from thin twigs of a drooping branch of a small tree or bush.
Eggs (Guide)
2, sometimes 3; light flesh to salmon-buff, with small sparse spots of red-brown, purple-red and paler grey, often in a zone at the larger end; oval; about 19 x 14 mm. Incubation: about 14 days.
Young
Altricial, nidicolous. Fledge in about 14 days.
Subspecies
Forms a superspecies with Fuscous Honeyeater (Ptilotula fusca). Often considered conspecific with Fuscous Honeyeater (Ptilotula fusca). New Guinea birds very similar in appearance to Australian ones, but treated by some authors as a separate subspecies, germanus (described from Laloki R, in Port Moresby District). Proposed subspecies deserticola (from Margaret R, in Kimberley District of Western Australia) and zanda (from Normanton, Gulf of Carpentaria, in Queensland) are synonyms of nominate.
The following 2 subspecies are recognised:
flavescens (Gould, 1840) - Coastal and subcoastal northern Australia from the Kimberley Divide, WA to western and southern central Cape York Peninsula, Qld but excluding coastal Arnhem Land.
melvillensis (Mathews, 1912) - Tiwi Islands (Bathurst Island, Melville Island), off northern Northern Territory, in northern Australia.
Similar Species
Fuscous Honeyeater (Ptilotula fusca) which is more olive-brown rather than yellow, has a darker patch on the lores and around the eye, and has a yellow neck-plume, and Grey-fronted Honeyeater (Ptilotula plumula) which has a bright yellow plume beneath a thin black line, a black face and lores and lightly streaked underparts.
References
See References.
The Field Guide to the Birds of Australia Pizzey, G., and Knight, E., 1997, Angus & Robertson, Sydney ISBN 0 207 19691 5
Field Guide to Australian Birds Morecombe, M., 2000, Steve Parish Publishing Pty Ltd. ISBN 1 876282 10 X
Field Guide to the Birds of Australia Simpson, K., and Day, N., 1999, 6th Edition, Viking ISBN 0 670 87918 5
Reader's Digest Complete Book of Australian Birds 1988, 2nd Edition, Reader's Digest ISBN 0 949819 99 9
What Bird is That? 1984, Revised Edition, Angus & Robertson, Sydney ISBN 0 207 14846 5
Handbook of Australian, New Zealand & Antarctic Birds 1990 - , Oxford University Press, Melbourne ISBN 0 19 553244 9
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BirdLife International Species Factsheet