A very Warty-faced Honeyeater

[Penny Brockman <>]

I wonder if there is something wrong with this bird?  I've seen many Regent HEs at Capertee over the years and had good close looks through binoculars - never seen tubercles as pronounced as these. Perhaps David Gearing could comment as he's handled many.

On 24/01/2020 11:02 AM, Geoffrey Dabb wrote:

Over the last 12 days a single Regent Honeyeater has been observed by many
watchers on the fringes of Canberra's 'inner north'.   As one commented to
me ' it has brought a lot of joy to birdos during this terrible time of fire
and drought and now hail storm'.  The weight of expert opinion is that it is
a female.  While the 'bare patch' might be described as small it has a very
thick crop of what I would call 'tubercles' (cf HANZAB 'nodules' and Gould
'warty excrescences').  These appear, at the margin, to be growing up
through the bristly feather growth - hence very little visible true 'bare
skin'.  There are more and smaller tubercles visible on the right side
(about 50) than the left (about 40).    (I remember an Australian Nobel
prize-winner saying 'All science is counting'.  In view of my information
offered here you might be inclined to add 'but not all counting is science'.
Perhaps not.)   Photos in the BLA Gallery show the many different kinds of
'bare patch' you might find in this species.   This one appears quite close
to the specimens shown in the Gould lithograph. (Below - snip from original
available on  NLA website).    

 

 



 



 

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