Red-headed myzomela

The red-headed myzomela is a passerine bird of the honeyeater family Meliphagidae found in Australia, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea. It is sexually dimorphic; the male has a glossy red head and brown upperparts and paler grey-brown underparts while the female has predominantly grey- brown plumage. Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical mangrove forests. The nominate subspecies has a dark red head, dark rump, and a bright red neck.

About Red-headed myzomela in brief

The red-headed myzomela is a passerine bird of the honeyeater family Meliphagidae found in Australia, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea. Two subspecies are recognised, with the nominate race M. e. erythrocephala distributed around the tropical coastline of Australia, and M. e. infuscata in New Papua. It is sexually dimorphic; the male has a glossy red head and brown upperparts and paler grey-brown underparts while the female has predominantly grey- brown plumage. Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical mangrove forests. While the IUCN lists the Australian population as being near threatened, as a whole the widespread range means that its conservation is of least concern. The nominate subspecies has a dark red head, dark rump, and a bright red neck, while the subspecies of the crimson-hooded myzOMela is endemic to the Indonesian island of Wetar. It averages 12 centimetres, with a wingspan of 17–19cm and a weight of 8 grams. The rest of the body is a blackish-brown, light-brown and red-grey breast and under-body, and the upper body is sharply brown and the breast is light-grey. The male of the nominate subspecies has a bright, red, rump-like head, bright red underparts, and dark brown underparts.

It lays two or three oval, white eggs with small red blotches. It calls constantly as it feeds and is very active when feeding in the tree canopy, darting from flower to flower and gleaning insects off foliage. A 2004 genetic study of nuclear and mitochondrial DNA of honeyeaters found it to be the next closest relative to a smaller group consisting of the scarlet and cardinalMyzomelas, although only five of the thirty members of the genus were analysed. A 2017 genetic study using both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA suggests that the ancestor of the red-head myzomera diverged from that of the black-breasted myzomers around 4 million years ago; however, the relationships of many species within the genus are uncertain. The genus name is derived from the Ancient Greek words myzo ‘to suckle’ and meli ‘honey’, and refers to the bird’s nectarivorous habits. The red-heads are a member of the  genus MyZomela which includes two other Australian species, the scarlets and the dusky myzoms. It has been hypothesised that north-western Australia was the primary centre of origin for the two subspecies.

Related posts:

Scarlet myzomela Grey currawong Red-necked grebe Black honeyeater