Black-chinned Honeyeater Melithreptus gularis

Length 14–16.5 cm; wingspan 22–25 cm; weight 20 g.

Noisy, active and gregarious, this Black-chinned Honeyeater is usually seen in pairs and small groups of up to about 12 birds throughout year, though groups are possibly larger outside the breeding season.  They usually feed briskly and acrobatically among the foliage and flowers in the canopy of trees, where they can be difficult to observe.  They also forage on the branches and trunks of trees, and also aerially, and occasionally in shrubs in the understorey or on the ground.  Black-chinned Honeyeaters often feed, drink and bathe with other honeyeaters, such as Fuscous, Yellow-tufted or Brown-headed Honeyeaters.  Some are inquisitive, descending from the canopy to peer at an intruder below, before flying, without haste, to another tree.  Males are pugnacious, chasing any other species, even much larger ones.  The flight is swift and undulating, and at the start of the breeding season, males are said to behave frenetically, with several flying together high above the vegetation, warbling and fluttering their wings.

HABITAT
The species mostly inhabits the upper levels of open eucalypt forests or woodlands, often those by box–ironbark eucalypts, including: Mugga Ironbark, Western Grey Box, Yellow Gum, Yellow Box, Grey Box, Forest Red Gum and White Box.  They often occur in riparian and littoral associations, including woodlands dominated by River Red Gum or Coolibah, sometimes with dense thickets of paperbark and Callistemon, or shrubby understorey of acacias, or in tall dry open Spotted Gum forest with a patchy or continuous understorey.  They are less often recorded in open forests of smooth-barked gums, stringybarks or tea-trees.  Black-chinned Honeyeaters sometimes occur in eucalypt forests or woodlands that are interspersed with clumps of banksias, cypress-pines or Belah.

DISTRIBUTION
Endemic to mainland Australia.

STATUS

• Rare in Queensland
• Vulnerable in New South Wales
• Near Threatened in Victoria, and listed as a member of a declining Temperate Woodland Community in Victoria
• Vulnerable in South Australia (South-East); Rare in South Australia (Northern)

THREATS
Much of this species’ habitat has been cleared and the remainder is fragmented.  Though their relative mobility should make Black-chinned Honeyeaters cope with fragmentation better able than some other species, the species is nevertheless absent from many small fragments of remnant habitat for unknown reasons.

MOVEMENTS
Usually described as resident, though nomadic movements are noted occasionally, probably referring to local movements associated with the flowering of trees.

Return to Previous Page