Honeyeater

The honeyeaters, a large and varied family called Meliphagidae, are small to medium-sized birds. They are most numerous in Australia and New Guinea, but also live in New Zealand, Pacific islands reaching east to Samoa and Tonga, and the Indonesian region of Wallacea. Bali, just across the Wallace Line, hosts just one species. The family includes Australian chats, myzomelas, friarbirds, wattlebirds, miners, and melidectes. With 186 species spread across 55 genera, about half are native to Australia, with most of the rest in New Guinea. Their closest relatives are the Maluridae (fairy-wrens), Pardalotidae (pardalotes), and Acanthizidae (thornbills and scrubwrens), together forming the superfamily Meliphagoidea. This group emerged early in the evolution of oscine passerines. Though honeyeaters look and act like other nectar-feeding birds worldwide—such as sunbirds and flowerpeckers—they are not related; those similarities come from convergent evolution.

The partnership between honeyeaters and Australasian flowering plants is likely deep, though its full extent is unknown. Many Australian plants, especially in the Proteaceae, Myrtaceae, and Ericaceae families, rely on honeyeaters for pollination. Their role is known to be important in New Zealand, and it is assumed to be similar elsewhere.

Honeyeaters may eat nectar, insects, fruit, or a mix of nectar and insects. Unlike hummingbirds, they lack strong adaptations for hovering, though smaller species sometimes hover like hummingbirds to gather nectar. Typically, they flit quickly from perch to perch in outer foliage, stretching sideways or upside down as needed. Many have a brush-tipped tongue, frayed with bristles that soak up liquids. They flick the tongue rapidly into a flower, then compress the liquid out when closing the bill. Nearly all honeyeaters also take insects and small creatures, usually by hawking or gleaning. Larger species, like the white-eared honeyeater and the strong-billed honeyeater of Tasmania, probe under bark for insects. Many eat some fruit, and a few—especially in tropical rainforests and semi-arid scrub—consume a lot. The painted honeyeater specializes in mistletoe. Generally, longer-billed species are more nectarivorous, while shorter-billed ones are less so, but even specialized nectar-eaters like spinebills eat extra insects for protein during breeding.

Honeyeater movements are poorly understood. Most are at least partly mobile, but many movements seem local, possibly between favorite spots as conditions shift. Local numbers often fluctuate, but aside from a few clearly migratory species, the reasons remain unknown. Many follow the flowering of preferred food plants. Arid-zone species seem to travel farther and less predictably than those in fertile areas. No single explanation is likely to emerge.

In taxonomy, the genera *Cleptornis* (golden honeyeater) and *Apalopteron* (Bonin honeyeater) were moved to the Zosteropidae based on genetic evidence. The New Zealand stitchbird (*Notiomystis*) was removed to its own family, Notiomystidae. MacGregor's bird-of-paradise, once placed with birds-of-paradise, is now recognized as a honeyeater and classified in Meliphagidae. The wattled smoky honeyeater (*Melipotes carolae*) was described in 2007 after its discovery in December 2005 in Papua's Foja Mountains. In 2008, a molecular study of museum specimens from the extinct Hawaiian genera *Moho* and *Chaetoptila* argued that these five species are not honeyeaters but belong to their own family, the Mohoidae.