Black-collared Swallow

A medium-sized olive-gray honeyeater with a pale yellow cheek patch and a relatively stout bill. Cheek patch is often a crescent compared to the circular patch on Graceful Honeyeater and the oval path on Yellow-spotted Honeyeater. Adults have a bluish eye, while the similar Graceful Honeyeater has a blue-gray eye and Yellow-spotted Honeyeater has a brown eye. Listen for the rapid staccato machine-gun call of Lewin’s compared to the loud repeated whistles of the Yellow-spotted Honeyeater and the more simple, single note call of Graceful Honeyeater. Of the three easily confusable species, this is the only one found away from the tropics; it occurs in wetter forests and gardens all along the eastern coast of Australia.

Tiny rotund, short-tailed bird, scarcely larger than a sparrow; like a diminutive partridge or quail but only distantly related. Brown with scaly streaking above, extensive black barring on the chest (more extensive on the female), and rich tawny flanks. Extremely difficult to detect, moving about invisibly in dense weedy vegetation in fields, forest edges, and farmland. Flying birds have whirring flight, show contrast between dark flight feathers and paler coverts. Courting females give sonorous, booming calls from dense vegetation.

A sunbird masquerading as a warbler, this medium-sized sunbird of forest and forest edge is often found in small groups or mixed-species flocks searching the understory deliberately for insects. Overall yellow-green with more olive tones to the head. Has distinctive pale spectacles around its eye and a large, slightly decurved bill. Could be confused with longbills, but note Fraser’s Sunbird’s decurved bill and noticeable spectacles around the eyes. Calls include a short, dry “tiktiktik!” The song is a longer set of sunbird-like notes with noticeable pauses in between, varying in quality from clear whistles to trills: “dree, djier, drtil, drtil.”