This morning, during our walk, I saw a blue-faced honeyeater. Just the one, though there must have been others in the gum blossoms. It was too gloomy to see properly in the leaf canopy. It’s my first sighting of this bird and, at first, I thought it was a blue jay. I said the light was bad.

Wikipedia says, in part …

The blue-faced honeyeater (Entomyzon cyanotis), also colloquially known as the bananabird, is a passerine bird of the honeyeater family Meliphagidae. …

At around 29.5 cm (11.6 in) in length, the blue-faced species is large for a honeyeater. … Males and females are similar in external appearance. Adults have a blue area of bare skin on each side of the face readily distinguishing them from juveniles, which have yellow or green patches of bare skin.

Here is a photo from Wikimedia Commons.

By Quartl (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Found in open woodland, parks, pubs, and gardens, the blue-faced honeyeater is common in northern and eastern Australia and southern New Guinea. … Its diet is mostly composed of invertebrates, supplemented with nectar and fruit. They often take over and renovate old babblernests, in which the female lays and incubates two or rarely three eggs. …

The blue-faced honeyeater was first described by ornithologist John Latham in his 1802 work Supplementum Indicis Ornithologici, sive Systematis Ornithologiae. However, he described it as three separate species, seemingly not knowing it was the same bird in each case: The blue-eared grackle… the blue-cheeked bee-eater …, and as the blue-cheeked thrush…

Rapt to see a new bird, I could hardly wait to get home to find a name for it, as I didn’t have a clue. I think where I live must be on the southern-most edge of their habitat. I’m surprised I haven’t noticed them while camping by the Murray River, north from here, on our border with New South Wales.

I’ve just visited the Birds In Backyards website, reading up on which native plants are best for planting with my local birds in mind. I reckon I can find places for at least 10 shrubs, maybe more. I’ll let you know.

Okay, that’s it for me on the web, for now. I must get back to this writing lark.

Have a good day. Thanks for reading.  🙂