NEW-HOLLAND HONEYEATER 347 
NEW-HOLLAND HONEYEATER 
Meliornis novce-hollandice assimilis 
With wax-yellow wing-bars and white breast broadly 
striped with black, the New-Holland Honeyeater is 
certainly the most striking, as it has lately become 
in the town one of the most common, of our Honey- 
eaters. It is a bold and noisy bird, the note varying 
from a sharp harsh chatter to a loud reeling note 
which distinctly suggests a song. 
Up till the year 1890, and probably later, this bird 
was only a winter visitor to Geelong. I remember a 
great influx of them in the month of May, 1889, 
when a number of tall aloes blossomed and the clusters 
of flowers at the end of the lateral branches were 
centres of attraction for hundreds of Honeyeaters, 
from the little Spinebill to the great grey Wattle- 
bird. But these all returned to the forests with the 
advent of spring, and I heard of no nests of the present 
species until about 1893. Now it must be almost as 
common as the Greenie, and breeds in numbers every 
year in the Park. 
A nest Mr. Greenfield showed me in 191 3 was 
built at the top of a pittosporum tree, an unusual site, 
as the bird most often builds in a low bush and not 
more than 3 feet from the ground. 
One does not see this bird in absolutely plain 
country, but it abounds wherever there is a patch, 
however restricted in area, of bushland or flowering 
