White-eyes 797 



bird, stealing material for its nest whenever opportunity offers, and during the 

 breeding season becomes fierce and pugnacious, readily attacking Crows, Hawks, 

 and other large birds that venture within its chosen habitat and driving them 

 away to a distance. When wounded it has the power of inflicting severe and 

 deep wounds with its sharp claws and strong bill. Gould found them breeding 

 on the upper Hunter River in such numbers as to be termed almost gregarious, 

 though ordinarily but one nest is found in a place. The nest, a large structure 

 of stringy bark, strings, or ribbons, and lined with grass or wool, is suspended 

 by the rim to the forked branchlets of a drooping limb, at no great height from 

 the ground, and utterly without regard for secrecy. The three to five eggs are a 

 pale salmon-color with minute spots of chestnut or purple. 



THE WHITE-EYES 



(Family Zosteropidce) 



The White-eyes, or Silver-eyes, so called from the presence of a rim of small 

 white feathers surrounding the eyes in most species, comprise but a single l 

 genus (Zosterops) and over one hundred and forty species, though Finsch has 

 recently divided it into three genera, while Zoster ops still includes one hundred 

 and thirty-eight of the species. They have usually been placed among the 

 Honeyeaters (Meliphagidce), but, pending a full anatomical examination, it 

 seems best to accord them family rank and to place them near the Sun- 

 birds and Flower-peckers, which they also somewhat resemble. They are 

 all small birds, mostly between four and five inches in length, with a slender, 

 pointed, straight, or slightly curved bill about half the length of the head, the 

 nostrils covered by a large membrane, while the tongue is protractile and bifid, 

 each half usually being cut up into many stiff, horny fibers which form a brush. 

 The wings are rather short, with the first primary so extremely small as to be often 

 difficult of detection, while the tail is short and square. The tarsus is of moder- 

 ate length and covered with a few scales in front, and the middle and outer toes 

 are partially united. The sexes are alike in plumage and the color pattern is 

 very uniform, being composed principally of olive and yellow, while the under 

 parts are usually whitish washed with brown, gray, and fawn-color. 



The White-eyes arc spread over most of Africa south of the Sahara, the 

 Indian and Malayan regions, and thence to China and Japan and southward 

 to Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. They are active little birds, some- 

 times seen singly or in pairs, but mostly in large or small flocks, and frequenting 

 gardens, orchards, and shrubbery as well as more open forest, where they search 

 industriously for minute insects, which form their principal food, though they 

 are also fond of sucking the juice of various fruits, whence certain of them are 

 looked upon as pests. One Australian species (Z. ctzrulescens] is so given to 



1 Another genus (Hypocryptadius} of small brownish birds from the Philippines has been doubt- 

 fully referred here by Hartert. 



