79 



'Friar birds, or leather-heads, as t,hey are more frequently called, also 

 ' belong to the same great famih', and there are some half-dozen varieties 

 'of leather-heads. 



"As there is, of course, a family likeness amongst pretty well all the 

 ' family, and as some of the different members of it are much alike, identi- 

 ' fication often becomes a hopeless task to the amateur. Especially is this 

 'the case when he finds the experts differing among themselves, with Mr. 

 ' North, of Sydney, on one side and Mr. A. J. Campbell, of Melbourne, on 

 ' the other. Another trap for the amateur is the difference that usually 

 'exists between male and female, and between mature and immature birds. 

 ' Only recently by the way, I had an amusing experience of the confusion 

 'caused by the slow development of plumage in connection with the 

 'well-known Crimson Lory parrot. This bird is so common, both wild and 

 'as a pet, that I thought everyone knew that for the first year the young 

 ' birds were almost all-green. But a bush man declared emphatically that 

 ' the green and the red birds were quite different, although he admitted that 

 ' they were found mixed together in flocks. The Crimson Lory is certainly 

 'a striking instance of the difference, in plumage between young and 

 'mature birds; but the same principle is common to the great majority of 

 ' our birds. 



" Of course, not all of these 70 odd honey-eaters are found in Victoria, 

 'but a large number of them, I should say about 45 different kinds, are; 

 ' so that the difficulty of identifying them is obvious. The honey-eaters 

 'are a highly interesting family. Their most striking feature is their 

 ' strange brush-tipped tongue. It is an almost universal rule in the bird or 

 'animal world that, when the beak or mouth is closed, the tongue dis- 

 appears inside and cannot be seen. But the honey-eaters are an exception 

 ' to this rule, as, when they close their beak, a little delicate brush, like a fine 

 'camel-hair brush, is seen hanging from the end of the beak. It projects 

 ' varying distances, sometimes more than half-an-inch being visible, and at 

 ' first it appears as if the bird had something foreign in its mouth. Upon 

 ' opening the bill however, it is at once seen to be just a prolongation 

 ' of the tongue. 



•• The name of the bird, of course, tells one of the use of this brush- 

 ' tongue. The home of the honey-eater is in the tops of the red-gums and 

 'yellow-boxes at flowering time. Then the birds have a thorough holiday 

 'time. They flit from blossom to blossom, darting their feather}- tongues 

 ' into the cups of the flowers and revelling in the honey. The trees in the 

 ' forests flower just when the young honey-eaters are ready, as a rule, to 

 ' leave their nests, so that the young ones have an easy start in life. It is 

 •sometimes said that the honey-eaters are mis-named, and that it is not 

 'honey but insects, that they search for in the blossoms. But you have 

 ' only to look at the bird's brush-tongues to see that, whatever they may be 

 •seeking in the flowers, they simply cannot avoid getting their tongue 



