Helmeted honeyeater
| Helmeted honeyeater | |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Passeriformes |
| Family: | Meliphagidae |
| Genus: | Lichenostomus |
| Species: | L. melanops |
| Subspecies: | L. m. cassidix |
| Trinomial name | |
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Lichenostomus melanops cassidix (Gould, 1867) |
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The helmeted honeyeater (Lichenostomus melanops cassidix) is a passerine bird in the honeyeater family. It is a distinctive and critically endangered subspecies of the yellow-tufted honeyeater, that exists in the wild only as a tiny relict population in the Australian state of Victoria, in the Yellingbo Nature Conservation Reserve. It is Victoria’s only endemic bird, and was adopted as one.
The helmeted honeyeater is one of four subspecies of the yellow-tufted honeyeater. The taxonomic history of L. m. cassidix is complicated. Schodde and Mason affirm its subspecific status but suggest that there is intergradation across eastern Victoria and south-eastern New South Wales between it and the nominate subspecies L. m. melanops. This conclusion disallows L. m. gippslandicus as a taxon, and suggests that cassidix occurs more widely through West Gippsland than is currently recognised. However genetic research, conducted on behalf of Victoria's helmeted honeyeater recovery team by Hayes, does not support Schodde and Mason’s subspecific arrangement, but confirms the distinctiveness of cassidix both as a taxon and the limits of its current geographic range to the Yellingbo area.
The helmeted honeyeater is the largest and most brightly coloured of the yellow-tufted honeyeater subspecies. It has a distinctive black mask between the yellow throat, pointed yellow ear-tufts and the fixed “helmet” of golden plushlike feathers on the forehead hello , with a dull golden crown and nape demarcated from the dark olive-brown back and wings. The underparts are mainly olive-yellow. It is 17–23 centimetres (6.7–9.1 in) long, weighing 30–40 grams (1.1–1.4 oz), with males larger than the females.
Historically, helmeted honeyeaters were patchily distributed in the mid-Yarra and Western Port catchments of central southern Victoria, in the South Eastern Highlands IBRA bioregion. Their range and population declined steadily through the 20th century, with the population reaching a low of 15 breeding pairs and about 50 individuals in late 1989, the year a recovery program began. Former colonies at Cockatoo and Upper Beaconsfield had become extinct not long before as a consequence of the Ash Wednesday bushfires of February 1983. Following the implementation of the recovery program the population increased to a peak of about 120 individuals in 1996, but has since declined to about 20 wild breeding pairs.
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