Species Fact Profile: Blue-Faced Honeyeater (Entomyzon cyanotis)

Blue-Faced Honeyeater

Entomyzon cyanotis (Latham, 1801)

Range: Southern New Guinea, Northern and Eastern Australia
Habitat: Open Woodland, Rainforest, Mangroves, Plantations
Diet: Insects, Nectar, Fruit
Social Grouping: Pairs, Small Flocks Up to 7 Birds
Reproduction: Round cup nests made of twigs and grass, often built atop the nests of other birds.  Two (sometimes three) pink eggs with red-brown splotches.  Both parents tend to the eggs.  Incubation 16 days.  Chicks born blind and almost completely featherless.  Chicks remain with their parents to assist in rearing the next year's clutch of chicks.
Lifespan: 8 Years (Wild)
Conservation Status: IUCN Least Concern

• Body length 26-32 centimeters, weight 105 grams
• Largely white with black breast and head with olive green wings and a bare patch of blue skin around the eyes (this patch of skin is pale yellow in juveniles).
• Important pollinators of many Australian plants - forage using long tongue with brush-like tips to obtain nectar from flowers
• Sedentary in some parts of its range, migratory in others
• Sometimes form mixed-species flocks with yellow-throated miner birds; will work together to mob goshawks, owls, and other birds of prey
• Three subspecies - the nominate in eastern Australia, E. c. griseigularis in New Guinea (smallest of the subspecies), and E. c. albipennis in northern Australia (long bill, shorter tails, white wing patch)
• Some other birds - Pacific koels, pallid cuckoos - will lay their eggs in the nests of honeyeaters for the honeyeaters to hatch and care for
• Inquisitive and friendly, will enter campsites and gardens in search of food, will eat honey and jelly out of jars

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