Blue-faced Honeyeater

Appearance

A large honeyeater ranging from 26 to 32 cm and averaging 29.5 cm in length, the adult Blue-faced Honeyeater has a wingspan of 44 cm and weighs around 105 g.

In general shape, it has broad wings with rounded tips and a medium squarish tail. The sturdy slightly downcurved bill is shorter than the skull, and measures 3 to 3.5 cm in length.

It is easily recognised by the bare blue skin around its eyes. The head and throat are otherwise predominantly blackish with a white stripe around the nape and another from the cheek. The upperparts, including mantle, back and wings, are a golden-olive colour, and the margins of the primary and secondary coverts a darker olive-brown, while the underparts are white.

Juveniles that have just fledged have grey head, chin and central parts of their breasts, and brown upperparts, and otherwise white underparts. After their next moult, they more closely resemble adults and have similar plumage, but are distinguished by their facial patches.

The bare facial skin of birds just fledged is yellow, sometimes with a small patch of blue in front of the eyes, while the skin of birds six months and older has usually become more greenish, and turn darker blue beneath the eye, before assuming the adult blue facial patch by around 16 months of age.

The Blue-faced Honeyeater begins its moult in October or November, starting with its primary flight feathers, replacing them by February. It replaces its body feathers anywhere from December to June, and tail feathers between December and July.

A distinctive bird, the Blue-faced Honeyeater differs in coloration from the duller-plumaged friarbirds, miners and wattlebirds, and it is much larger than the similarly coloured "Melithreptus" honeyeaters. Subspecies "albipennis" with its white wing patch has been likened to a khaki-backed butcherbird in flight.

Naming

The Blue-faced Honeyeater was first described by ornithologist John Latham in his 1802 work "Supplementum Indicis Ornithologici, sive Systematis Ornithologiae".

Distribution

The Blue-faced Honeyeater is found from the Kimberleys in northwestern Australia eastwards across the Top End and into Queensland, where it is found from Cape York south across the eastern and central parts of the state, roughly east of a line connecting Karumba, Blackall, Cunnamulla and Currawinya National Park.

Behavior

The Blue-faced Honeyeater produces a variety of calls, including a piping call around half an hour before dawn, variously described as "ki-owt", "woik", "queet", "peet", or "weet". Through the day, it makes squeaking noises while flying, and harsh squawks when mobbing. Its calls have been likened to those of the Yellow-throated Miner, but are deeper. Blue-faced Honeyeaters make a soft chirping around nestlings and family members.

The social organisation of the Blue-faced Honeyeater has been little studied to date. Encountered in pairs, family groups or small flocks, Blue-faced Honeyeaters sometimes associate with groups of Yellow-throated Miners.

They mob potential threats such as goshawks, Rufous Owls, and Pacific Koels. There is some evidence of cooperative breeding, with some breeding pairs recorded with one or more helper birds. Parents will dive at and harass intruders to drive them away from nest sites, including dogs, owls, goannas, and even a Nankeen Night Heron.

Social birds, Blue-faced Honeyeaters can be noisy when they congregate. When feeding in groups, birds seem to keep in contact with each other by soft chirping calls.

Habitat

They live throughout rainforest, dry sclerophyll forest, open woodland, "Pandanus" thickets, paperbarks, mangroves, watercourses, and wetter areas of semi-arid regions, as well as parks, gardens, and golf courses in urban areas.

Reproduction

The Blue-faced Honeyeater probably breeds throughout its range. The breeding season is from June to January, with one or two broods raised during this time.

The nest is an untidy deep bowl of sticks and bits of bark in the fork of a tree, Staghorn or Birds Nest Ferns, or grasstree. "Pandanus" palms are a popular nest site in Mackay. They often renovate and use the old nests of other species, most commonly the Grey-crowned Babbler, but also the Chestnut-crowned Babbler, other honeyeaters including Noisy, Little and Silver-crowned Friarbirds, the Noisy Miner and the Red Wattlebird, and artamids such as the Australian Magpie and butcherbird species, and even the Magpie-lark.

Like those of all passerines, the chicks are altricial; they are born blind and covered only by sparse tufts of brown down on their backs, shoulders and parts of wings. By four days they open their eyes, and pin feathers emerge from their wings on day six, and the rest of the body on days seven and eight.

Both parents feed the young, and are sometimes assisted by helper birds.

Food

The bulk of their diet consists of insects, including cockroaches, termites, grasshoppers, bugs such as lerps, scale and shield bugs, beetles such as bark beetles, chafers, click beetles, darkling beetles, leaf beetles, ladybirds of the genus "Scymnus", weevils such as the pinhole borer, and members of the genera "Mandalotus", "Polyphrades" and "Prypnus", as well as flies, moths, bees, ants and spiders.

Birds have been reported preying on small lizards. Prey are caught mostly by sallying, although birds also probe and glean.

The remainder of their diet is made up of plant material such as pollen, berries, nectar, from such species as grasstrees and scarlet gum, and cultivated crops such as bananas or particularly grapes.

Predators

The Pacific Koel and Pallid Cuckoo have been recorded as brood parasites of the Blue-faced Honeyeater, and the Laughing Kookaburra recorded as preying on broods.