The yellow-plumed honeyeater (Ptilotula ornata) is a species of bird in the family Meliphagidae. It is endemic to Australia, where it inhabits temperate forests and Mediterranean-type shrubby vegetation.
The yellow-plumed honeyeater was previously placed in the genus Lichenostomus, but was moved to Ptilotula after a molecular phylogenetic analysis, published in 2011, showed that the original genus was polyphyletic.[1] [2]
The yellow-plumed honeyeater is a medium-sized honeyeater with a relatively long, down-curved black bill, a dark face and a distinctive, upswept yellow neck plume. It has an olive-green head, with a faint yellow line under the dark eye, grey-green upperparts, and heavily streaked grey-brown underparts. Young birds have a yellow bill base and eye-ring.
Similar species include purple-gaped honeyeater,[3] grey-fronted honeyeater[4] and fuscous honeyeater.[3] [4]
The song is a loud, clear, three-note chier wit chier, often performed before dawn, and by males during display flight.[5]
The yellow-plumed honeyeater is endemic to southern mainland Australia, from western New South Wales and Victoria, through South Australia to south-west Western Australia.[4]
The main habitat type for yellow-plumed honeyeater is mallee.[3] They occupy a broader range of habitat in the west of their range, including dry eucalypt woodland and eucalypt open-forest.[5] They occasionally occur outside their usual habitat, such as in Acacia and Callitris woodland,[5] and seasonally in flowering red ironbark forest, flowering grey box-yellow box woodland.[3]
They occur in sedentary, colonial groups, which may relocate in response to harsh conditions.[5] They are noisy and conspicuous, and will jointly defend nesting or feeding territories, by engaging in communal wing quivering displays.[5]
Yellow-plumed honeyeaters are mainly insectivorous, foraging actively mainly in outer and upper foliage, branches and trunks of eucalypts, and taking insects on the wing by hawking. [3] They also feed opportunistically on nectar,[5] including from various mallee eucalypts, yellow gum, grey box, red ironbark, and box mistletoe.[3]
Yellow-plumed honeyeaters build an open, cup-shaped nest suspended by the rim from foliage or from a thin fork of mallee eucalypts and other small shrubs.[4] Nests are made from wool, green grass and spider webs, and lined with wool, grasses, plant-down and brightly-coloured feathers.[4] Both parents feed the young, sometimes with the assistance of helpers.[4]
Yellow-plumed honeyeater nests are parasitised by fan-tailed cuckoos, pallid cuckoos, Horsfield's bronze-cuckoos and shining bronze-cuckoos.[4]
The species is listed under the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as a species of Least Concern.
The yellow-plumed honeyeater occurs in several protected areas, including:
* Greater Bendigo National Park[3]
* Inglewood Nature Conservation Reserve[3]
* Wychitella Nature Conservation Reserve[3]