The adults have the crown of the head and back of the neck black; lower part of the face, chin and centre of the chest slaty black; a crescent-shaped mark at the occiput, a line from the lower mandible passing down each side of the neck, and all the under surface pure white; upper surface and wings greenish golden olive; primaries brown, the basal half of their inner webs snow-white; tail-feathers brown, tinged with golden olive, all but the two centre ones tipped with white; point and cutting edges of the upper mandible blackish grey; basal half of the culmen horn-colour; remainder of the bill sulphur-yellow; orbits brilliant blue; legs and feet leek-green.
The Plate represents an adult and an immature bird of the natural size.
MELITHREPTUS VALIDIROSTRUS: Gould.
J. Gould and H. C. Richter del et lith. Hullmandel & Walton Imp.
MELITHREPTUS VALIDIROSTRIS, Gould.
Strong-billed Honey-eater.
Hæmatops validirostris, Gould in Proc. of Zool. Soc., Part IV. p. 144; and in Syn. Birds of Australia, Part I.
Eidopsaris bicinctus, Swains. An. in Menag., p. 344. No. 188.—Ib. Class. of Birds, vol. ii. p. 327.
Cherry-picker, Colonists of Van Diemen’s Land.
This bird, the largest species of the genus yet discovered, is a native of Van Diemen’s Land, and so universally is it distributed over that island, that scarcely any part is without its presence. The crowns of the highest mountains as well as the lowlands, if clothed with Eucalypti, are equally enlivened by it. Like all the other members of the genus, it frequents the small leafy and flowering branches; it differs, however, from its congeners in one remarkable character, that of alighting upon and clinging to the surface of the boles of the trees in search of insects, after the manner of the Woodpecker and Nuthatch,—not that it can traverse this part of the tree with the same facility; I never in fact saw it run up and down the trunk as those birds do, but merely fly to such parts as instinct led it to select as the probable abode of insects; and it always perches across the stem,—a position seldom, if ever, assumed by the Nuthatch or Woodpecker; I do not, however, consider this habit of sufficient importance to warrant its separation from those with which it is here associated.
The chief food of this species is insects of various kinds, after which it searches with the most scrutinizing care among the flowering gums.