Nesting.—Yamashina (1932a:395) records a large collection of eggs of the honey-eater, taken at Ponapé in 1931. Of 13 sets of eggs listed, 10 include two eggs per set and 3 include one egg per set. These were obtained from July 20 to September 2. Coultas (field notes) found one nest with young in a tree-fern in the period of November and December, 1930. The nest was cup-shaped and made of fern and fine grasses and lined with lichens. Coultas writes that only the female feeds the young. He suspects that the honey-eater nests at all times of the year.
Molt.—Most of the birds taken by Coultas in November and December are in molting plumage.
Remarks.—The Cardinal Honey-eater at Ponapé is, according to Coultas, found in most habitats of the island. He found it to be an aggressive bird, often chasing the white-eye Zosterops cinerea. The committee (Hachisuka et al.) which prepared the Hand-list of Japanese Birds in both the revised edition (1932) and the third edition (1942) does not recognize the Ponapé honey-eater as separable from the bird at Kusaie. I see no reason for this action and find the bird at Ponapé to be a well-marked subspecies.
Myzomela cardinalis major Bonaparte
Cardinal Honey-eater
Myzomela major Bonaparte, Comptes Rendus Acad. Sci. Paris, 38, 1854, p. 264. (Type locality, "ex Ins. Carolinis ab Homb. et Jacq." = Truk.)
Myzomela major Gray, Hand-list Birds, 1, 1869, p. 153 (Caroline = Truk); Giebel, Thes. Ornith., 1875, p. 681 (Carolinae = Truk?); Takatsukasa and Kuroda, Tori, 1, 1915, p. 64 (Ruk); Kuroda, Dobutsu, Zasshi, 27, 1915, p. 28 (Ruk); idem, Dobutsu Zasshi, 28, 1916, p. 71 (Ruk).
Myzomela rubratra Finsch (part), Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1880, p. 575 (Ruk); Schmeltz and Krause, Ethnogr. Abth. Mus. Godeffroy, 1881, p. 253 (Ruk); Wiglesworth (part), Abhandl. und Ber. Zool. Mus. Dresden, no. 6, 1890-1891 (1891), p. 31 (Ruk); Oustalet (part), Nouv. Arch. Mus. Hist. Nat. Paris, (3), 7, 1895, p. 202 (Ruk); Hartert (part), Novit. Zool., 5, 1898, p. 56 (Ruk); idem (part), Novit. Zool., 7, 1900, p. 2 (Ruk); Dubois (part), Syn. Avium, 1, 1902, p. 714 (Carolines = Truk?).
Myzomela rubrata Matschie (part), Journ. f. Ornith., 1901, p. 112 (Ruck); Takatsukasa and Kuroda (part), Tori, 1, 1915, p. 55 (Ruk).
Myzomela rubratra rubrata Wetmore (part), in Townsend and Wetmore, Bull. Mus. Comp. Zoöl., 63, 1919, p. 221 (Uala).