THE



73



Avicultural Magazine,


BEING THE JOURNAL OF

THE AVICULTURAL SOCIETY.



Third Series.— V ol. VII.—No. 3. —All rights reserved. JANUARY, 1916.



THE GENUS ZOSTEROPS.


WHITE-EYES.


By Dr. ARTHUR G. BUTLER.


This group of dainty warbler-like birds was originally char¬

acterized by Vigors and Horsfield in the fifteenth volume of the

Transactions of the Linnean Society ; it was placed by different

authors among the bulbuls, tits, honey-eaters and sunbirds, and

eventually separated from all as a distinct family Zosteropidce:

its numerous members occur in the Old World “ from Africa to

most of the islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and north¬

ward in Asia through India and China to Amurland and Japan ”

(Newton).


The term white-eye is used as the trivial name in scientific

works, but the dealers of England, adopting a translation of the

German appellation—brillenvogel, call the species “ spectacle-birds,”

a very apt term when one notes that the eyes are not white but

surrounded by a white ring : nevertheless the name has before now

led to confusion between the White-eyes and the so-called Spectacle-

finch of the genus Sporophila.


The prevailing colour of the upper parts in Zosterops is

greenish olive or mouse brown, the lower parts being yellow, some¬

times with the throat white and more or less tinted with bay on the

flanks ; the length of the bill varies a good deal in different species :

the wings are moderate in length, the tail short, the legs fairly

slender, but the toes strong. In its movements it is active and

lively and in some of its actions much resembles the tits, for which



