Black Honeyeater - Distribution and Habitat

Distribution and Habitat

The Black Honeyeater is a bird of the dry inland of Australia, being generally widespread if scattered in western Queensland and New South Wales to the South Australian border and occasionally recorded in the Victorian Mallee and Wimmera regions. In South Australia, it occurs in the south-east and it is widespread in the central and northern regions of Western Australia, with some rare records in the south near Kalgoorlie. In the Northern Territory it is widespread around Alice Springs, with some vagrants to the Top End.

It is dependent on the presence of the emu bush Eremophila longifolia and related species. As a result, the Black Honeyeater is found in open woodlands and shrublands of arid and semi-arid regions, as well as in mulga or mallee woodlands, and it will also be found in spinifex savanna where flowering shrubs such as grevilleas and paperbarks occur. It has been noted that the Black Honeyeater is able to locate emu bushes, even when clumps consisted of only two or three trees and were separated by many miles of country, which suggests the importance of this plant-bird association.

The Black Honeyeaters is considered to be migratory rather than nomadic, with regular seasonal movements related to flowering of food plants, especially the emu bush. Some movements are southwards in spring and summer, moving northwards again in autumn and winter. During severe droughts it has been recorded south of Bendigo and in the Hunter Valley. Irruptions (sudden population increases) can occur in some areas after rain or the movement of floodwaters.