366 



A VES— ORDER PASSERIFORMES. 



The 

 Honey-Suckers. 



— Family 

 ileliphagidai. 



are white, with rufous or reddish-brown spots. The genua Oerthia 

 contains about ten species, of which our tree-creeper (Gerthia famili- 

 aris) is the typical one, but members of the genus are found through- 

 out Europe and Northern Asia, as well as in the Himalayan mountains. 

 They occur also throughout North America and extend into Central 

 America. 



Just as in the climbing birds like woodpeckers, there are stiff- 

 tailed species and soft-tailed species, so we find in the creepers the spiny- 

 tailed GerthicE, and some soft-tailed genera like Salpornis of India 

 and Africa, Glimacteris of Australia and New Guinea, and the crimson- 

 winged creeper (Tichodroma muraria), a species which 

 inhabits the mountainous regions from China to the 

 Himalayas, and from Turkestan to the Alps and 

 the Pyrenees. It is a beautiful little bird of a 

 delicate grey colour ; in this it resembles a nut- 

 hatch, but the bill is curved like that of a creeper. 

 Like a nut-hatch, it has white spots on the outer 

 tail-feathers, but has the wing-coverts crimson. 



The honey-suckers are one of those curious Aus- 

 tralasian families which stand apart by themselves, 

 and for which it is difficult to esti- 

 mate the correct relationship. Gould 

 wrote in 1865 a very excellent note 

 on these birds, tlie habits of which 

 he had studied himself in nature : 

 ■ — " The honey-eaters are unquestion- 

 ably the most peculiar and striking feature in Aus- 

 tralian ornithology. They are, in fact, to the farmer 

 what the Eucalypti, Baiiknue, and Melalencce are to the flora of Australia. 

 The economy of these birds is so strictly adapted to those trees that the one 

 appears essential to the other ; for what can be more plain than that the 

 brush-like tongue is especially formed for gathering the honey from the flower- 

 cups of the Eucalypti, or that their diminutive stomachs are especially formed 

 fur this kind of food, and the peculiar insects which form a portion of it." 

 The brush-tongue is the chief character of the honey-suckers, which are very 

 numerous in Australia and New Guinea, and extends into the Moluccas and 

 Polynesia. 



The sun-birds are very similar in outward aspect to the neo-tropical 

 humming-birds {TrochUi, antea, p. 347). They are richly decorated in 

 metallic colours, but instead of hovering in front of 

 flowers, suspended in the air with a vibrating flight, 

 they are more like tits in their ways ; at least, so we 

 gathered from watching a little troup of Giimyris a^mtica in 

 a garden at Delhi, where they crept about through the 

 bushes, uttering a little tit-like chirp, and picking oflf small insects from 

 the leaves. 



^The Malachite sun-bird (Necturlnia fnmosa) is one of the largest of the 

 Nectariniida, and is found in Southern' Africa. Most of the species of sun- 

 birds have square tails, but N. famoM and a few other African species 

 have the central tail-feathers elongated. The sun-birds have an ex- 

 tensile tongue similar to that of the humming-birds and woodpeckers, 



Fig. 105.— Teb Crimson- 



"wiNGED Creeper 



(Tichodroma muraria). 



The Sun- Birds. 

 — Family 



Nectariniidcr. 



