Altamira Oriole

A small bird with a very long blue tail that is held cocked. Breeding male has a bright pale-blue helmet, black breast, purple back, and chestnut shoulders. Small pale tips are sometimes visible on the tail. Over much of the species’s inland range, females are overall grayish birds with pale fronts and long blue tails; however, females of the subspecies found in the sandstone regions of the Kimberley and Arnhem Land have contrasting blue crowns and backs. This species occurs over much of arid inland Australia and is found in open vegetation.

Large hawk-like cuckoo of dense forests, usually foraging in the canopy, where difficult to see. Adult has gray upperparts, streaked white underparts, and long tail with thick dark bars. Juvenile similar but darker brown overall. Large Hawk-Cuckoo very similar but adult averages larger, with a more elongated profile, broader tail bands, and extensive rusty smudging on the neck; juvenile lacks the rusty tone but is densely marked below with arrow-shaped marks, unlike the rounder, sparser marks of juvenile Malaysian. Juvenile Hodgson’s Hawk-Cuckoo also confusingly similar but is likewise more extensively streaked below. Gives two distinct songs, a high “kiwit!” and a rapid-fire series of piping notes.

A shy but loud bird of forests and forest edges that usually stays within cover. Shaped like a greenbul, but has a thicker, more robust bill. Shows grayish underparts, greenish upperparts, yellow spots on the tips of the flight feathers and upperwing coverts, a yellow throat, and yellow lores. Similar to the larger Western Nicator, but note Yellow-throated’s smaller size, yellow throat and lores, and distinctive song, which often betrays its presence: a sputtering series of notes that can be surprisingly resonant and loud, a “p-p-p-po-keer-ko-wheeeer-pop” and other variations. Call is a growling trill, “prrrrrr.”