On Honey-Eaters.



347



the following tale in the Minahassa. Children are asked, ‘ If ten

birds sit on a tree, and one is shot down, how many remain on

the tree?’ The children answer, ‘nine’; but the master says,

‘wrong,’ because they all fly away-except when the birds are

kulli-kulli ; in this case the children are right.


“ The cry of P. plahiris is like kak, kak.


“At Menado, I once had a specimen in captivity, but it

appeared to be very unhappy in its cage.” {Ibis 1S79, p. 49.)


D. S.-S.



HONEY-EATERS.


By A. J. Campbell, Melbourne.


(Author of “ Nests and Eggs of Australian Birds.")


The Meliphagous or Honey-eating birds of Australia are

an exceedingly numerous and varied family—there are no less

than between seventy and eighty species. Besides being naturally

graceful in form, the majority are very beautiful and amongst the

liveliest and most songful of the feathered denizens of the

bush. Seemingly they lead quite a romantic existence flitting

from flower to flower, feasting on insects and wild honey all the

day's of their life. They feed principally on the nectar of the

abundant flowers of the ubiquitous Eucalypt trees one or other

species of which blooms all the year round. Should this giant

form of vegetation (heights ranging up to 300 feet) be scarce,

then cheerful Honey-eaters fall back on the cyclindrical

flowers (called “ honey-suckles ”) of the Banksia trees, the star¬

shaped flowers of the Leptospernmm , the bottle-brush-sliaped

blooms of the yellowish Melaleuca or flaming Callistemons, etc.,

etc., scrubs, not to mention honey laden bells of the heatli-like

Epacris and other shrubs. Indeed, some of the pretty birds

when the land, in a good season, is literally flowing with honey,

have surfeited themselves so much that they have been picked

up incapacitated under some favourite flowering tree (but please

tell it not aloud) in a state of dnmke?i?iess and that too in the

day time.


Notwithstanding this human-like weakness it would seem

a pity to confine even in a spacious aviary such feathered



