The grey honeyeater (''Conopophila whitei'') is a species of

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class (biology), class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the Oviparity, laying of Eggshell, hard-shelled eggs, a high Metabolism, metabolic rate, a fou ...

in the

honeyeater The honeyeaters are a large and diverse family, Meliphagidae, of small to medium-sized birds. The family includes the Australian chats, myzomelas, friarbirds, wattlebirds, miners and melidectes. They are most common in Australia and New Gui ...

family. It is an uncommon and little-known bird, an often overlooked

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also foun ...

of remote areas in central

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

Taxonomy

Currently placed as a species of the genus ''

Conopophila ''Conopophila'' is a genus of bird in the family Meliphagidae. It contains the following species: The name is derived from the Greek word for gnat GNAT is a free-software compiler for the Ada programming language which forms part of the ...

'' and classified within the honeyeater family

Meliphagidae The honeyeaters are a large and diverse family (biology), family, Meliphagidae, of small to medium-sized birds. The family includes the Epthianura, Australian chats, myzomelas, friarbirds, wattlebirds, Manorina, miners and melidectes. They are m ...

, ''Conopophila whitei'' was first described by A. J. North in 1910 as ''Lacustroica whitei''. The population continued to be assigned to a

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unisp ...

genus ''Lacustroica'', or as most closely related to two other species, the rufous-banded ('' Conopophila rufogularis'') and rufous-throated ('' C. albogularis'') honeyeaters. The species was found by

F. Lawson Whitlock Frederick Bulstrode Lawson Whitlock (1860-1953) was an ornithological writer and oölogist, active in England and across Western Australia. The first years of his life, living in England, he became known as F.B. Whitlock. Later in life, in A ...

in 1903 at

Lake Austin Lake Austin, formerly Lake McDonald, is a water reservoir on the Colorado River in Austin, Texas. The reservoir was formed in 1939 by the construction of Tom Miller Dam by the Lower Colorado River Authority. Lake Austin is one of the seven Texa ...

in Western Australia, but no formal description was made. The two specimens he shot and prepared were sent to the Western Australian Museum, about which he received no reply. At the beginning of his later expedition, in 1909, Whitlock killed and skinned a male of the species, recognised as the same he collected in 1903, and located the preparation of a nest by a breeding pair close to the town-site of Wiluna. Whitlock also noted the location of other nesting sites on his journeys around Wiluna, all of which he found had been removed when he returned to them. He continued to observe the progress of the nest near the main street, that had remained undisrupted, eventually removing the branch that held it for his collection. These specimens were supplied to North for the first accepted description, published the following year. The specific epithet ''whitei'' honours Alfred Henry Edsworth White, the son of ornithologist Henry L. White. The generic name ''Conopophila'' is derived from the Ancient Greek ''konops'' 'gnat' and ''philos'' '-loving'. The image accompanying North's description in ''

Emu The emu (; ''Dromaius novaehollandiae'') is a species of flightless bird endemism, endemic to Australia, where it is the Tallest extant birds, tallest native bird. It is the only extant taxon, extant member of the genus ''Dromaius'' and the ...

'' (1910) was captioned with the name 'Alfred Honey-eater'. The informal names for this species also include White's honeyeater and inconspicuous honeyeater. The

IOC World Bird List ''Birds of the World: Recommended English Names'' is a paperback book written by Frank Gill and Minturn Wright on behalf of the International Ornithologists' Union. The book is an attempt to produce a standardized set of English names for all bi ...

has proposed grey honeyeater as the common name for this species.

Description

A tiny honeyeater, grey and discreet, with a nondescript colouration that is only faintly marked. The length is . The plumage of the upper body is generally cold grey, the lower parts paler, becoming browner until a moult. Tail and flight feathers are a blackish brown, and a slightly darker marking extends across the eye to the bill. The tips of the tail feathers are white, aging to buffish. The bill is relatively short for a honeyeater, slightly down-curved and grey, becoming black toward the tip. There is a pale and indistinct ring of feathers, tinted buff, around the eye. The colour of the iris is brown, the legs are steel grey. Juveniles have a faintly yellowish cast to the thin eye-ring, that almost disappears as they mature, and on the pale grey feathers of the throat. The grey flight feathers of the immature birds have a yellow-green wash. The grey honeyeater is similar in appearance to the Western gerygone ('' Gerygone fusca''), yellow-rumped thornbill (''

Acanthiza chrysorrhoa The yellow-rumped thornbill (''Acanthiza chrysorrhoa'') is a species of passerine bird from the genus Acanthiza. The genus was once placed in the family Pardalotidae but that family was split and it is now in the family Acanthizidae. There are ...

'') and others of the genus ''

Acanthiza ''Acanthiza'' is a genus of perching bird, passeriform birds, most endemic to Australia, but with two species (''A. murina'' and ''A. cinerea'') restricted to New Guinea. These birds are commonly known as thornbills. They are not closely relat ...

'', all of which it often accompanies in

mixed species flocks A mixed-species feeding flock, also termed a mixed-species foraging flock, mixed hunting party or informally bird wave, is a flock of usually insectivorous birds of different species that join each other and move together while foraging. These are ...

.Simpson, Ken, Day, N. and Trusler, P. (6th edn., 1999). ''Field Guide to the Birds of Australia''. Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin Books Australia . Care should be taken to distinguish the grey honeyeater from the female redthroat ('' Pyrrholaemus brunneus'')

Voice

The most common call of the grey honeyeater has been described as a piercing, metallic, quick, double squeak "chirra-wik-chirra-wik", or "cre-seek" and somewhat resembling the call of the white-bellied cuckooshrike (''

Coracina papuensis The white-bellied cuckooshrike (''Coracina papuensis'') is a species of bird in the family Campephagidae. It is found in Australia, the Moluccas, New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Taxonomy The white-bellied cuckooshrike was formally describ ...

''). It also makes a weak, grating, high-pitched tinkling or a plaintive series of notes given in quick succession, sounding like "troo-whee, troo-whee".

Distribution and habitat

The grey honeyeater is found in a range extending across the mid-west to the centre of the Australian continent, especially in the

Pilbara The Pilbara () is a large, dry, sparsely populated regions of Western Australia, region in the north of Western Australia. It is known for its Indigenous Australians, Aboriginal people; wealth disparity; its ancient landscapes; the prevailing r ...

and Murchison regions of

Western Australia Western Australia (WA) is the westernmost state of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Aust ...

, and southern and central

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (abbreviated as NT; known formally as the Northern Territory of Australia and informally as the Territory) is an states and territories of Australia, Australian internal territory in the central and central-northern regi ...

. It is rare to uncommon and probably sedentary with some nomadic movement. The species is found in semi-arid mulga (''

Acacia aneura ''Acacia aneura'', commonly known as mulga, is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to inland Australia. It is a variable shrub or small tree with flat, narrowly linear to elliptic phyllodes, cylindrical spike ...

'') and similar acacia scrublands.Morcombe, Michael (2012) ''Field Guide to Australian Birds.'' Pascal Press, Glebe, NSW. Revised edition. The occurrence of

mistletoe Mistletoe is the common name for obligate parasite, obligate parasitic plant, hemiparasitic plants in the Order (biology), order Santalales. They are attached to their host tree or shrub by a structure called the haustorium, through which they ...

may be an important factor in determining its distribution. Some good locations for finding the grey honeyeater are the

Olive Pink Botanic Garden Olive Pink Botanic Garden is a botanic garden in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory of Australia, specialising in plants native to the arid central Australian region. History The 16 ha area that is now Olive Pink Botanic Garden was gaz ...

, Alice Springs, in the Northern Territory, and Wanjarri Nature Reserve, south of Wiluna, and Tom Price, in Western Australia.

Behaviour

Breeding

The breeding season is August to November, which may extend through to May, if there is summer rain. The

nest A nest is a structure built for certain animals to hold Egg (biology), eggs or young. Although nests are most closely associated with birds, members of all classes of vertebrates and some invertebrates construct nests. They may be composed of ...

is a small, frail, untidy cup of fine grass stems, lined with hair and plant down, bound with spider web, hanging from slender twigs in the outer foliage of a mulga shrub. A clutch of 1 or 2 eggs, each measuring , is laid. The eggs are swollen oval and slightly glossy white, spotted with reddish-brown. Incubation is probably by both sexes, as is the feeding of nestlings and fledglings.

Feeding

The grey honeyeater is primarily

insectivorous A robber fly eating a hoverfly An insectivore is a carnivorous animal or plant which eats insects. An alternative term is entomophage, which can also refer to the human practice of eating insects. The first vertebrate insectivores we ...

, busily gleaning the surface of foliage for lerp and similar insects or hovering to capture flying insects.Higgins, P., L. Christidis, and H. Ford (2020). "Gray Honeyeater (Conopophila whitei), version 1.0." In ''Birds of the World'' (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie, and E. de Juana, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.gryhon1.01 It also feeds on nectar by piercing the deep, tubular flowers of species such as ''Eremophila'', and on the nectar and berries of mistletoe.

Conservation status

The grey honeyeater is classified as

least concern A least-concern species is a species that has been evaluated and categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as not being a focus of wildlife conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wil ...

on the

IUCN Red List The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, also known as the IUCN Red List or Red Data Book, founded in 1964, is an inventory of the global conservation status and extinction risk of biological ...

. It is considered as

endangered An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching, inv ...

in Western Australia. Threats are uncontrolled fires from which mulga takes many years to recover, and also grazing by introduced animals that damage the habitat.

References

External links

{{Taxonbar, from=Q1039899

grey honeyeater The grey honeyeater (''Conopophila whitei'') is a species of bird in the honeyeater family. It is an uncommon and little-known bird, an often overlooked Endemism, endemic of remote areas in central Australia. Taxonomy Currently placed as a speci ...

Birds of Western Australia Birds of the Northern Territory Endemic birds of Australia

Taxonomy articles created by Polbot