WHITE-PLUMED HONEYEATER 345 
in ground-colour from light cream to deep reddish 
buff, with red-brown spots which, while more plentiful 
towards the larger end, do not usually form a ring. 
CRESCENT OR TASMANIAN HONEYEATER 
Phylidonyris pyrrhoptera indistincta 
I DO not know any bird which has a louder voice for 
its size than the Crescent or Tasmanian Honeyeater ; 
it suggests an excited tuning of high-pitched fiddles, 
and rings out startlingly in the dense gullies which are 
the home of the species. A few birds we see in the 
winter about the town ; with the splash of reddish 
gold across their wings they might at first be taken 
for the larger, commoner, and more brilliant New- 
Holland Honeyeater, of which I shall speak presently, 
but if you can get a look at one from the front you 
will see a lunar-shaped black mark down each side 
of the breast, curving so as almost to meet in 
the centre, from which comes the name Crescent 
or Horse-shoe Honeyeater. They are slenderer- 
built, too, than the New-Holland bird, and move 
about the bushes more sinuously. The female is 
much duller in plumage than the male, and has 
merely a trace of gold on the wings. 
In the month of August these Honeyeaters are 
numerous in the flowering hedges of kangaroo-acacia 
about two miles west of Torquay, but do not appear 
to breed there, nor indeed anywhere west of Anglesea. 
Here, in a thick growth of young ti-tree about a 
