Wikipedia:Today's featured article/October 15, 2013

The Blue-faced Honeyeater is a passerine bird of the Honeyeater family Meliphagidae and is common in northern and eastern Australia and southern New Guinea. A large honeyeater at around 29.5 cm (11.6 in) in length, it has distinctive plumage, with olive upperparts, white underparts and a black head and throat with white nape and cheeks. Males and females are similar in external appearance. Adults have a blue area of bare skin on each side of the face readily distinguishing them from juveniles, which have yellow or green patches of bare skin. Found in open woodland, parks, and gardens, it appears to be sedentary in parts of its range and locally nomadic in other parts; however, the species has been little studied since it was first described by the ornithologist John Latham in 1802. Its diet is mostly composed of invertebrates, supplemented with nectar and fruit. Its propensity for feeding on the flowers and fruit of bananas in north Queensland has given it the common name of "Bananabird". Blue-faced Honeyeaters often take over and renovate old babbler nests, in which the female lays and incubates two or rarely three eggs. Three subspecies are recognised. (Full article...)

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