Black Butcherbird
Melloria quoyi
Medium-sized ambush-hunter with a long gray bill with a dark, hooked tip. Completely black plumage; in some cases immature is brown instead of black. Inhabits denser vegetation of mangroves and rainforest edges. Song is varied, with deep warbling; many calls, including a loud, throaty, ringing note.
Identification
The adult is black all over except for its beak which is black-tipped grey. Most juveniles are rufous-brown. Confusingly, some juveniles are black while some brown young birds may rarely retain their brown colour into adulthood. As the only butcherbirds with wholly black bodies, they are sometimes confused with crows or currawongs, from which they are distinguished by their gray and hooked bills.
Taxonomy
Evidence was published in a 2013 molecular study which showed that it was the sister taxon to the Australian magpie (Gymnorhina tibicen). The ancestor to the two species is thought to have split from the other butcherbirds between 8.3 and 4.2 million years ago, during the late Miocene to early Pliocene, while the two species themselves diverged sometime during the Pliocene (5.8–3.0 million years ago).
- Scientific name
- Melloria quoyi
- Authority
- (Lesson, RP & Garnot, 1827)
- Order
- Passeriformes
- Family
- Artamidae
- Genus
- Melloria
Range and habitat
- Migration
- Resident species
Behavior
In Papua New Guinea, Black butcherbirds have been observed parasitizing the nests of Hooded monarch birds.<p>In 1903, ornithologist E. M. Cornwall observed brown and black varieties of the bird, the black preferring deeper forest and the brown preferring coastal scrub or mangroves.
Conservation
- Population trend
- stable
Photos
Distribution
Bird Calls
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