Habitat
Mainly paperbark forest and woodland around wetlands. Sometimes mixed forests where trees and shrubs of other species occur with paperbarks. Also open eucalypt forest and woodland, especially those near wetlands, with understorey varying from dense sclerophyllous subcanopy and shrublayer, to open grassy understorey.
Northern Western Australia (Kimberley Division), Melville I and Top End of Northern Territory east to southern Gulf of Carpentaria and northern and eastern Queensland (Cape York Peninsula south to Atherton, and south on eastern coast to Rockhampton).
Population
Estimated population is unknown (2010).
Bar-breasted Honeyeater (Ramsayornis fasciatus) [XC438807]
by nick talbot from Mango Lagoon, Oyala-Thumotang NP, Queensland, Australia (call)
Bar-breasted Honeyeater (Ramsayornis fasciatus) [XC706585]
by James Lambert from Muirhead, City of Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia (song)
Nest
Bulky, dome-shaped, with a side-entrance, composed of strips of paper-bark and fine rootlets bound with cobweb, lined with soft bark, usually suspended from a pedent branch overhanging water. One of only two honeyeaters having a nest with a side entrance, the other being Brown-backed Honeyeater (Ramsayornis modestus).
Eggs (Guide)
2 - 3; matt, white, closely blotched with mid red-brown, often forming a zone, mostly at the larger end; tapered-oval; about 21 x 14 mm. Incubation: probly by both sexes.
Young
Altricial, nidicolous. Fed by both parents.
Subspecies
No subspecies.
Suggestions that populations from eastern Australia are intermediate between present species and Brown-backed Honeyeater (Ramsayornis modestus) are not supported by any studies. There is no significant regional variation in plumage and size.
Proposed subspecies apsleyi (from Melville I) and broomei (from Napier Broome Bay, in Kimberley Division) considered insufficiently differentiated.
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