The yellow-tufted honeyeater was first described by the English ornithologist John Latham in 1801, and given two different binomial names: Muscicapa auricomis and Turdus melanops. The latter name was retained as a nomen protectum, and the former a nomen oblitum, as the epithet melanops has been used consistently for over a century. It belongs to the honeyeater family Meliphagidae. More recently, DNA analysis has shown honeyeaters to be related to the Pardalotidae, and the Petroicidae in a large corvid superfamily; some researchers include all these families in a broadly defined Corvidae. The generic nameLichenostomus is derived from the Ancient Greek leikhēn 'lichen, callous' and stoma 'mouth'; the specific epithet melanops derives from Ancient Greek melas 'black' and opsis 'face'.
L. m. gippslandicus, Gippsland yellow-tufted honeyeater
L. m. melanops, Sydney yellow-tufted honeyeater
L. m. meltoni, inland yellow-tufted honeyeater, is smaller and duller in plumage with a smaller tuft, which was described by G. M. Mathews in 1912.
Description
The yellow-tufted honeyeater is long, with females usually smaller. It has a bright yellow forehead, crown and throat, a glossy black mask and bright golden ear-tufts. The back is olive-green to olive-brown on wings and tail, and the underparts are more olive-yellow. The bill and gape are black, eyes brown, and legs grey-brown.
Distribution and habitat
The yellow-tufted honeyeater occurs from south-east Queensland through eastern New South Wales and across Victoria. Its preferred habitats are dry open sclerophyll forests and woodlands dominated by eucalypts with shrubby undergrowth, as well as mallee, brigalow and cypress-pine. The helmeted honeyeater subspecies is largely restricted to dense vegetation along riverbanks, dominated by the mountain swamp gum with a dense understorey of woolly tea-tree, scented paperbark, saw-sedge, ferns and tussock grasses.
Behaviour
Yellow-tufted honeyeaters are a noisy, active species in colonies from a few up to a hundred. It aggressively defends territories around flowering trees. It has a great variety of calls from a warbled "tui-t-tui-t-tui", a whistled "wheit-wheit", a sharp "querk" to a harsh contact-call "yip" or "chop-chop".
Diet and Foraging
The diet of the yellow-tufted honeyeater is primarily arthropods, such as a variety of insects and spiders, and occasionally snails. It also feeds on lerps and honeydew, nectar and sap flows from eucalypts, occasionally fruit and flowers. It takes insects in flight and by probing the bark of tree-trunks and limbs.
Breeding
Breeding takes place between July and March, with one or two broods each season. The nest is a cup-shaped structure of dried grasses, bits of bark and other plant material, bound with spider webs and lined with fur and feathers, hung by its rim in dense shrubbery or regrowth. Two or three eggs, each measuring, are laid, pinkish in colour, blotched with pale reddish- or buff-brown. The eggs are incubated mostly by the female for 14-16 days. The nestlings are brooded by the female and fed by both sexes and any helpers, fledging at 13-15 days post-hatch and usually becoming independent by 6 weeks. The nests are parasitized by the fan-tailed cuckoo, pallid cuckoo and shining bronze-cuckoo.
This subspecies is listed as threatened on the Victorian Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act. Under this Act, an Action Statement for the recovery and future management of this species has been prepared.
On the 2007 advisory list of threatened vertebrate fauna in Victoria, the helmeted honeyeater is listed as critically endangered.
