The yellow-plumed honeyeater (Ptilotula ornata) is a species of bird in the family Meliphagidae. It is endemic to Australia, where it inhabits temperate forests and Mediterranean-type shrubby vegetation.
The yellow-plumed honeyeater is a medium-sized honeyeater with a relatively long, down-curved black bill, a dark face and a distinctive, upswept yellow neck plume.[4] It has an olive-green head, with a faint yellow line under the dark eye, grey-green upperparts, and heavily streaked grey-brown underparts.[4] Young birds have a yellow bill base and eye-ring.[4]
The song is a loud, clear, three-note chier wit chier, often performed before dawn, and by males during display flight.[6]
Distribution
The yellow-plumed honeyeater is endemic to southern mainland Australia, from western New South Wales and Victoria, through South Australia to south-west Western Australia.[4]
Ecology and behaviour
Yellow-plumed honeyeater in eucalypt canopy
The main habitat type for yellow-plumed honeyeater is mallee.[5] They occupy a broader range of habitat in the west of their range, including dry eucalypt woodland and eucalypt open-forest.[6] They occasionally occur outside their usual habitat, such as in Acacia and Callitris woodland,[6] and seasonally in flowering red ironbark forest, flowering grey box-yellow box woodland.[5]
They occur in sedentary, colonial groups, which may relocate in response to harsh conditions.[6] They are noisy and conspicuous, and will jointly defend nesting or feeding territories, by engaging in communal wing quivering displays.[6]
Diet
Yellow-plumed honeyeaters are mainly insectivorous, foraging actively mainly in outer and upper foliage, branches and trunks of eucalypts, and taking insects on the wing by hawking. [5] They also feed opportunistically on nectar,[6] including from various mallee eucalypts, yellow gum, grey box, red ironbark, and box mistletoe.[5]
Reproduction
Yellow-plumed honeyeaters build an open, cup-shaped nest suspended by the rim from foliage or from a thin fork of mallee eucalypts and other small shrubs.[4] Nests are made from wool, green grass and spider webs, and lined with wool, grasses, plant-down and brightly-coloured feathers.[4] Both parents feed the young, sometimes with the assistance of helpers.[4]
^Nyári, Á.S.; Joseph, L. (2011). "Systematic dismantlement of Lichenostomus improves the basis for understanding relationships within the honeyeaters (Meliphagidae) and historical development of Australo–Papuan bird communities". Emu. 111 (3): 202–211. doi:10.1071/mu10047. S2CID85333285.
^Gill, Frank; Donsker, David (eds.). "Honeyeaters". World Bird List Version 6.1. International Ornithologists' Union. Retrieved 28 January 2016.
^ abcdefMenkhorst, P., Rogers, D., Clarke, R., Davies, J., Marsack, P., Franklin, K. (2019) The Australian Bird Guide: Revised Edition, CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne, Victoria, ISBN9781486311934
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