The canary white-eye or yellow white-eye (''Zosterops luteus'') is a species of

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 ...

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 else ...

to northern Australia in subtropical or

tropical The tropics are the regions of Earth surrounding the Equator. They are defined in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the Northern Hemisphere at N and the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere at S. The tropics are also referred to ...

mangrove A mangrove is a shrub or tree that grows in coastal saline or brackish water. The term is also used for tropical coastal vegetation consisting of such species. Mangroves are taxonomically diverse, as a result of convergent evolution in severa ...

forests. Its common name reflects the circle of white feathers around its eye.

Description

''Zosterops luteus'' is a small white-eye with a bright olive back and yellow underparts and lores. It has a characteristic ring of silver-white feathers around its eyes, with a dark loral stripe. It is a nectar feeder with a short, sharp beak and a brush-tipped tongue similar to the honeyeaters. The bird is 100–110 mm long, with a wingspan of 52–59 mm, a bill of 13-16mm and weighs between 6.5 and 11.0 grams.

Taxonomy and systematics

The canary white-eye or yellow white-eye is a member of the family Zosteropidae, known as white-eyes, or silver-eyes. Their distribution includes Africa, south and east Asia, Australia, and many islands in the Indian and west Pacific Oceans. The

lectotype In biology, a type is a particular specimen (or in some cases a group of specimens) of an organism to which the scientific name of that organism is formally attached. In other words, a type is an example that serves to anchor or centralizes the ...

for this species is ANSP 18264, an adult male collected at Port Essington in the Northern Territory and held in the

Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, formerly the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, is the oldest natural science research institution and museum in the Americas. It was founded in 1812, by many of the leading natura ...

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...

. There is also a paralectotype ANSP 18265, another adult male collected from the same location. The species name for the canary white-eye or yellow white-eye is ''Zosterops luteus'' Gould, 1843, Greenhill Island, Van Dieman Gulf, Northern Territory, Australia. While there are variations in plumage and size across the range and some intergrading of the races, genetic testing suggests two subspecies split between the western and eastern populations. ''Z. l. balstoni'' Ogilvie-Grant, 1909 is found in coastal northwest Australia from Shark Bay (including

Dirk Hartog Island A dirk is a long bladed thrusting dagger.Chisholm, Hugh (ed.), ''Dagger'', The Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed., Vol. VII, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press (1910), p. 729 Historically, it gained its name from the Highland Dirk (Scot ...

), east to Wotjulum (

King Sound King Sound is a large gulf in northern Western Australia. It expands from the mouth of the Fitzroy River, one of Australia's largest watercourses, and opens to the Indian Ocean. It is about long, and averages about in width. The port town ...

) and the

Northern Kimberley The Northern Kimberley, an interim Australian bioregion, is located in the northern Kimberley region of Western Australia,Melville, Bickerton,

Groote Eylandt Groote Eylandt ( Anindilyakwa: ''Ayangkidarrba'' meaning "island" ) is the largest island in the Gulf of Carpentaria and the fourth largest island in Australia. It was named by the explorer Abel Tasman in 1644 and is Dutch for "Large Island" i ...

and

Sir Edward Pellew Group The Sir Edward Pellew Group of Islands is situated in the south-west corner of the Gulf of Carpentaria, off the coast of the Northern Territory, Australia. History They were named in 1802 by Matthew Flinders in honour of Sir Edward Pellew, ...

, to western

Cape York Peninsula Cape York Peninsula is a large peninsula located in Far North Queensland, Australia. It is the largest unspoiled wilderness in northern Australia.Mittermeier, R.E. et al. (2002). Wilderness: Earth’s last wild places. Mexico City: Agrupació ...

(

Edward River Edward River, or Kyalite River, an anabranch of the Murray River and part of the Murray–Darling basin, is located in the western Riverina region of south western New South Wales, Australia. The river rises at Picnic Point east of Mathoura, a ...

) and an isolated population in eastern Queensland in the region of

Ayr Ayr (; sco, Ayr; gd, Inbhir Àir, "Mouth of the River Ayr") is a town situated on the southwest coast of Scotland. It is the administrative centre of the South Ayrshire Subdivisions of Scotland, council area and the historic Shires of Scotlan ...

to the mouth of

Burdekin River The Burdekin River is a river located in North and Far North Queensland, Australia. The river rises on the northern slopes of Boulder Mountain at Valley of Lagoons, part of the western slope of the Seaview Range, and flows into the Coral Sea a ...

. The family and genus names, Zosteropidae Bonaparte 1853 and ''Zosterops'' Vigors & Horsfield 1827, come from the

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 ...

words ''zoster'' meaning a warrior's belt or girdle and ''ops'' meaning eye. The species name ''Zosterops luteus'' combines the genus name with the

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

''luteus'' meaning golden or saffron yellow. The name for the western subspecies ''balstoni'' derives from the name of the collector, W.E. Balston, who donated the specimens to the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

that Ogilvie-Grant described. Although the name derives from the donor's name, the specimens were collected by Mr G.C. Shortridge who was recognised in the naming of ''Zosterops shortridgii.'' The most commonly-used name for the species in Australia is yellow white-eye. Yellow White-eye Moochalabra Dam WA a

Behaviour and ecology

The bird is found in

, mangal and adjacent

river A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of w ...

ine vegetation. They feed on

insect Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three ...

s including

larva A larva (; plural larvae ) is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle. ...

e in the outer foliage of small trees or shrubs and occasionally on muddy mangrove flats. They are gregarious, usually found in pairs or small flocks. The

IUCN Red List The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, also known as the IUCN Red List or Red Data Book, founded in 1964, is the world's most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of biol ...

rating, th
Northern Territory Conservation StatusQueensland Conservation Status
ref name=Atlas/> and Western Australian Conservation Status for this species is

Least Concern A least-concern species is a species that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as evaluated as not being a focus of species conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wild. T ...

(LC).

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q2226191 canary white-eye Birds of Western Australia Birds of the Northern Territory Birds of Queensland Endemic birds of Australia canary white-eye Taxonomy articles created by Polbot