Voice
A brisk 'chickowee' or 'chickabiddy'. A 'due-wheat' contact call. In flight a 'chickowee, chickowee', 'chick-wert, chick-wert'. A high pitched strident trill, like an alarm clock, alarm call.
White-plumed Honeyeater (Ptilotula penicillata) [XC609065]
by Marc Anderson from The Pilliga, New South Wales, Australia (alarm call)
White-plumed Honeyeater (Ptilotula penicillata) [XC580239]
by Marc Anderson from The Pilliga, New South Wales, Australia (song)
Nest
Cup-shaped, neat, made of grasses bound with cobweb, lined with wool or hair, suspended from the thin twigs of a drooping branch of a tree from 1 - 12 m above the ground.
Eggs (Guide)
2 - 3; pink-white, sparsely spotted with red-brown, purple-brown and grey, often in a zone at the larger end; oval; about 20 x 15 mm. Incubation: about 10 - 14 days; by female only.
Young
Altricial, nidicolous. Fledge in about 12 days. Fed by both parents.
Subspecies
Forms a species group with Yellow-plumed Honeyeater (Ptilotula ornata), Grey-fronted Honeyeater (Ptilotula plumula), Fuscous Honeyeater (Ptilotula fusca) and Yellow-tinted Honeyeater (Ptilotula flavescens). Subspecies intergrade where they meet. Described subspecies centralius (from central Australia) and interioris (Ward R, south of Charleville, in south-western Queensland) represent intergrading populations; other proposed subspecies are geraldtonensis (from Geraldton, in Western Australia) and ladasi (East Murchison, in Western Australia), both merged with carteri, and mellori (Templestowe, in Victoria), synonymized with nominate.
The following 4 subspecies are recognised:
penicillata (Gould, 1837) - Greater Murray-Darling Basin, from Ceastern Queensland (west of Great Divide) south to gulfs of South Australia, extending east to Great Divide and locally to coastal and subcoastal southern and south-eastern Australia.
leilavalensis (North, 1899) - North-central northern Territory (from c. 18° S) and north-central Queensland south to South Australia (south to Gawler Ranges and northern Flinders Ranges) and north-western New South Wales (Barrier Range), but largely absent from Simpson Desert.
carteri (Campbell, AJ, 1899) - Pilbara and Gascoyne regions of western Australia (from upper De Grey-Fortescue rivers south to Geraldton and northern Wheatbelt) east to eastern Gibson Desert and in Great Victoria Desert to north-western South Australia.
calconi (Mathews, 1912) - Extreme south-western and southern Kimberley (southern Fitzroy River Drainage Basin) and adjacent Great Sandy Desert, in northern western Australia.
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