Thank you Kim. The Gould plate of this species was by Henry Richter who was employed by John Gould to work on the illustrations after the death of Elizabeth in 1841 at age 37.
In the below I should have said ‘south-western Victoria’ not ‘south-eastern’. The narrow coastal strip used by this species extends from South Australia in the west to about Westernport
in the east. There is an informative map in Directory of Australian Birds, Schodde & Mason, 1999. This shows, in my view, how the sandy coastal strip might have been colonised from the west by a population that became specialist feeders on the coastal shrubbery,
not advancing inland.
Below is a comment in Belcher 1914.
From: Kim Farley <>
Sent: Friday, 19 September 2025 6:40 PM
To: Geoffrey Dabb <>
Cc: Canberrabirds <>
Subject: Re: [Canberrabirds] So, the Singing Honeyeater
A very interesting post Geoffrey. Some folk might wonder if the blank areas on the maps reflect lack of observers rather than a lack of Singing Honeyeaters. But my quick look at an eBird Species Map for the super widespread Aust Magpie
shows pretty much all those blank areas filled with Magpie reports. So, the blank spaces are indeed indicative of a lack of Singing Honeyeaters rather than a lack of observers
PS I presume the painting is an Elizabeth Gould work? If so, she did a lovely job of it. Much better than her Pilotbird
On Fri, Sep 19, 2025 at 1:32 PM Geoffrey Dabb via Canberrabirds <>
wrote:
is making one of its infrequent visits here. This is an excuse for mentioning again the unusual occurrence pattern. In south-eastern Victoria, this is almost
exclusively coastal. Below eBird locations are from this year so far. John Gould, from the slight information available, had said ‘I have abundant evidence that the range of this species extends across the entire continent of Australia from east to west’.
Broadly true, except for some extensive blank spaces.
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