Description
The Black Honeyeater is a small honeyeater with a long slender down-curved bill, a small rounded head and slender neck set on a plump body, and a short, slightly cleft tail. It has relatively long, pointed wings compared with other Meliphagidae, and very long wings for such a small bird, the development of which has been attributed to its feeding behaviour of flying between shrubs and hovering over flowers.
The species is strongly sexually dimorphic. Adult males are black and white, with a black head, neck, wings and upperparts, and a black stripe running down from the centre of the chest to the abdomen, and with a white belly, flanks and under-tail coverts. The female’s crown, ear coverts and upper parts are buff brown, scalloped paler, with a pale eyebrow, and the chest is speckled grey-brown grading into a dull white belly. In both male and female the iris is dark brown and the bill and legs blackish brown. Immature birds are similar to the adult female, however the upper breast and throat tend to be more uniform and the base of the bill is paler. Immature birds are not separable from adults at a distance.
The Black Honeyeater is quiet outside the breeding season, but calls before and during nesting, often early in the morning. The calls include a soft metallic "chwit, chwit"; a louder note, a "tieee", with a monotonously even pitch and spacing at intervals of several seconds; and a weak "peeee", usually uttered by breeding males. In high song flights the males give a double noted "tieee-tieee". A soft scolding call is given by both sexes after the young hatch, which may be a food call for the young. The species is also heard making a bill snap when hawking insects. It is constantly on the move, hovering and hawking when feeding, and constantly chasing intruders at food sources. Gould described its flight as "remarkably quick, and performed with zigzag starts".
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