ZOSTEROPS LUTEUS, Gould.
Yellow Zosterops.
Zosterops luteus, Gould, in Proc. of Zool. Soc.
This new species is an inhabitant of the northern portion of Australia. “I first met with it,” says Mr. Gilbert, “in August, on Greenhill Island, Van Diemen’s Gulf, dwelling among the mangroves or the densest thickets. It is much more wild and solitary than Zosterops dorsalis, and does not resort like that bird to the gardens and the neighbourhood of the houses of the settlers; its note is also very different, being a pretty canary-like song, instead of the long drawn-out note of Z. dorsalis. When disturbed it usually left the thicket for the higher branches of the gum-trees, where it was effectually hidden from view by the thick foliage. It was generally met with in small families of from three to seven or eight in number.”
All the upper surface olive-yellow; primaries and tail-feathers brown, margined with olive-yellow; forehead and throat pure yellow; lores and line beneath the eye black; eye encircled with a zone of white feathers; abdomen and under tail-coverts dull yellow; irides light reddish brown; upper mandible blackish grey, the basal half rather lighter; apical third of the lower mandible blackish grey; basal two-thirds light ash-grey; legs and feet bluish grey.
The figures are of the natural size.