Honeyeaters | Meliphagidae

Honingeters | Mieleros australianos

The tongue ends in a brush of fine, split tips that fills with nectar as a brush fills with paint; the bird flicks it into a flower and out again up to ten times a second. In this region the family is the largest of all and the most important pollinator: eucalypts, banksias and grevilleas are pollinated almost entirely by birds and not by insects. Besides nectar a great deal of insect matter is taken, and the sugary caps that psyllids leave on eucalypt leaves. Many species carry bare skin around the eye or wattles at the throat, in yellow, red or blue. They are loud and fierce: the miners live in large colonies and drive every other bird out of their trees together, birds of prey included. Because flowering shifts from year to year, most species are nomadic and follow the front of bloom for hundreds of kilometres.