The Sri Lanka white-eye (''Zosterops ceylonensis'') is a small

passerine A passerine () is any bird of the order Passeriformes (; from Latin 'sparrow' and '-shaped'), which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds, passerines are distinguished from other orders of birds by t ...

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...

in the

white-eye The white-eyes are a family, Zosteropidae, of small passerine birds native to tropical, subtropical and temperate Sub-Saharan Africa, southern and eastern Asia, and Australasia. White-eyes inhabit most tropical islands in the Indian Ocean, the ...

family, which is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...

. It is a resident breeder in forests, gardens and plantations, mainly in the highlands.

Taxonomy

A study showed that it is not sister to the other Sri Lankan species, the Indian White-eye (''Zosterops palpebrosus''), and it also suggested that it is the root species which gave rise to all white-eyes on Earth. This raises further questions on white-eye origins.

Description

This bird is slightly larger than the

Indian white-eye The Indian white-eye (''Zosterops palpebrosus''), formerly the Oriental white-eye, is a small passerine bird in the white-eye family. It is a resident breeder in open woodland on the Indian subcontinent. They forage in small groups, feeding on n ...

(about 11 cm long) which it replaces above 4000 ft. The upper parts of the body and sides of neck are dark olive-green. The rump appears paler green while the crown and forehead appear darker. The wings and tail are brown edged with green on the back. The typical ring of tiny white feathers around the eye is present. The lores are dark and there is a dark streak below the eye. The chin, throat and upper breast are greenish-yellow as are the thighs and vent. The belly region is greyish white. The dark bill has a slaty base to the lower

mandible In anatomy, the mandible, lower jaw or jawbone is the largest, strongest and lowest bone in the human facial skeleton. It forms the lower jaw and holds the lower tooth, teeth in place. The mandible sits beneath the maxilla. It is the only movabl ...

. The legs are dark. The iris is yellow to reddish-brown. This species can be distinguished from the widespread Indian white-eye, ''Zosterops palpebrosus'', by its larger size, duller green back and more extensive yellow on the breast. It has a darker patch between the eye and the bill. It is sociable, forming large flocks which only disperse with the approach of the breeding season. It builds a tree nest and lays 3 unspotted pale blue eggs. Though mainly

insectivorous A robber fly eating a hoverfly An insectivore is a carnivorous animal or plant that eats insects. An alternative term is entomophage, which can also refer to the human practice of eating insects. The first vertebrate insectivores were ...

, the Sri Lankan white-eye will also eat nectar and fruits of various kinds. The English and scientific names refer to the conspicuous ring of white feathers around the eyes, ''Zosterops'' being

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

for "girdle-eye".

In culture

, this bird is known as ''Lanka Sithasiya'' in the

Sinhala language Sinhala ( ; , ''siṁhala'', ), sometimes called Sinhalese (), is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language primarily spoken by the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka, who make up the largest ethnic group on the island, numbering about 16 milli ...

. This bird appears on a 35c Sri Lankan postage stamp first issued in 1983.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q2225715 Birds described in 1872 Birds of Sri Lanka Endemic fauna of Sri Lanka Zosterops