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Armchair Splits in the Pacific

10,000 Birds

I’ve written before about how the Collared Kingfisher is a million splits waiting to happen (not happened yet), and the golden whistlers of the Pacific have been split now (giving me on from Fiji, one in Australia and one in Vanuatu), but I hadn’t really expected the Wattled Honeyeater to be a split. Photo from ‘Eua, Tonga.

Tonga 174
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What Exactly is a Pardalote?

10,000 Birds

Insofar as they relate to other bird families, they are perhaps closest to the thornbills, another family that is mostly Australian but reaches as far as Thailand and Fiji. Lerps are the carbohydrate rich protective shells exuded by tiny bugs (hermipteras) that suck sugars out of the leaves of eucalypts.

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