bloodbird

English

Etymology

From blood +‎ bird, from the bright red colour of the male.

Noun

bloodbird (plural bloodbirds)

1. An Australian honeyeater, the scarlet myzomela (Myzomela sanguinolenta).
   • 1914, Amy Eleanor Mack, A Bush Calendar, page 29:

     I was watching a lovely little read-headed honey-eater—that beautiful scarlet and black bird, familiarly known as the bloodbird— feeding busily in the top of a small turpentine tree, and ceasing operations now and again to utter his little running call.

   • 2013, Alyxandra Harvey, “Anywhere”, in Colleen Anderson, Steve Vernon, editor, Tesseracts Seventeen:

     At first only one bloodbird dipped low to catch insects in the last of the milkweed bursting their pods in the fields.

References

• “bloodbird”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.