Silvereye

Zosterops lateralis

Other Names: Silvereye (Grey Backed)
Family: Zosteropidae (White-eyes, 3 species in Australia)
Size: 12 cm
Distribution: Around the coasts of Australia, mainly in the Southeast, up to several hundred km inland in the Southeast.
Status: Common
Habitat: All types, orchards, gardens, everywhere really
References: Simpson and Day, Reader's Digest

Silvereyes are usually seen in numbers of at least 10 birds and sometimes a lot more. Like most small birds they do not stay in the one place very long. They are lovely birds and I always feel happy when I see them.

Silvereye - Zosterops lateralis
Photo: Blaxland, Blue Mountains NSW

The photo below shows two Silvereyes playing in the birdbath with a male Superb Fairy Wren.

Silvereye - Zosterops lateralis
Photo: Blaxland, Blue Mountains NSW

Silvereye - Zosterops lateralis
Artwork: John Gould, 'The Birds of Australia', 1848. Original Scanned Image.

Some Birdwatching Resources

Slater Field Guide to Australian Birds, Peter Slater, Pat Slater and Raoul Slater. This is a smaller field guide, and its advantage is it is easy to carry around. Its size is 21.3 x 11.4 x 2.8 centimetres, or 8.4 x 4.5 x 1.1 inches in the old scale. So it is a good one to get if you want to have your field guide with you out in the field. Unlike most of the field guides it also has illustrations of the eggs of all the birds that breed in Australia. It has very good reviews on Amazon.

Click here to Purchase from Australia (Booktopia)

Purchase from Australia (Angus & Robertson)

Click here to purchase from Australia (The Nile) $28.45 AUD (May be unavailable)

Click here to purchase from Australia (Fishpond) May be expensive.

Click here to purchase from Amazon

Field Guide to Australian Birds, by Michael Morcombe. This one has colour drawings of the eggs and the nests which not many other field guides do (I can't think of any that do). It's an excellent field guide and one of the four main ones (the other three being above this one). The weakness of this field guide is that some of the pictures of the birds aren't as good (or accurate) as the other three most used field guides. It's also the heaviest though there is a pocket edition which is much smaller and lighter.

Purchase from Australia (Booktopia)

Purchase from Australia (Angus & Robertson)

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