Whitehead's Spiderhunter
Arachnothera juliae
Unique to the Bornean highlands, this remarkable and highly-sought-after spiderhunter, with its bright white streaking and yellow rump, is utterly unmistakable. Forages actively in the canopy, often singly or in pairs, but sometimes with mixed flocks, frequently probing into flowers and mossy vegetation. Gives a clicking nasal call, “bu’chuk-yih-WEEEE”, or just the nasal “WEEEE”.
Identification
The species is a large, distinctive spiderhunter, with males having a length of 16.5–18 cm (6.5–7.1 in) and females having a length of 15.5–16.5 cm (6.1–6.5 in). It is mainly brown with profuse streaking on the head and body, buffy white streaking on the top of the head, narrow white streaks on the neck and back, fine brownish-white streaking on the throat, and broad white streaking on the rest of the underparts. The vent and uppertail coverts are bright yellow. The iris is brown, while the legs and bill are black. Both sexes look similar, while the juvenile plumage is unknown.<p>Whitehead's spiderhunters have very distinctive vocalisations, with a high-pitched, squeaky song. Their calls include a wheezy wee-chit, with the first note rising and second note falling in pitch, a complex series of nasal and wheezy wit-wit-wit-wt’wt’wt’weehee twitters and trills, and a teeh-teeh-wee, with the wee rising in pitch. Other calls are a see-wee see-wee, a swee-eee-eee, a tee-tee-swee-ee, prolonged twittering, and loud shrieks made in flight or while perched.
Taxonomy
In 1887, the British ornithologist Richard Bowdler Sharpe described Whitehead's spiderhunter as Arachnothera juliae on the basis of specimens collected from Mount Kinabalu, Borneo by the British explorer John Whitehead. The name of the genus is from the Ancient Greek arakhnēs, meaning spider, and thēras, meaning hunter. The specific name is in honour of Julia Charlotte Sophia, the wife of the Scottish ornithologist Arthur Hay. Whitehead's spiderhunter is the official common name designated by the International Ornithologists' Union and is in honour of Whitehead.<p>Whitehead's spiderhunter is one of 147 species in the sunbird and spiderhunter family Nectariniidae. Within the family, it is one of 13 species in the spiderhunter genus Arachnothera. A 2011 phylogenetic study by the ornithologist Robert Moyle and colleagues found Whitehead's spiderhunter to be most closely related to a clade (a group of all the descendants of a common ancestor) formed by the yellow-eared and naked-faced spiderhunters.
- Scientific name
- Arachnothera juliae
- Authority
- Sharpe, 1887
- Order
- Passeriformes
- Family
- Nectariniidae
- Genus
- Arachnothera
Range and habitat
Endemic to Borneo, Whitehead's spiderhunter is found in mountain ranges in the north-central part of the island, from Mount Kinabalu to the Dulit Range and Kayan Mentarang. It inhabits hill dipterocarp forest, primary and secondary montane forest, and forest edge at elevations of 930–3,000 m (3,050–9,840 ft).
- Migration
- Resident species
Behavior
The species is relatively sedate and has a generation length of 4.2 years.<p>Whitehead's spiderhunter feeds on small arthropods, berries, and nectar. It feeds alone, in pairs, or in groups of up to five birds, occasionally joining mixed-species foraging flocks. Foraging is usually conducted in the canopy, but the species will sometimes lower down at forest edges. It searches for food in foliage, particularly within clumps of epiphytes high up in the forest, and has been observed probing Rhododendron flowers.<p>The breeding season of Whitehead's spiderhunters lasts from March to at least August and males with enlarged testes have been collected in June and November. The species' nests are bowls lined with fine, fibrous bark, made inside a hollow in naturally-occurring clumps of moss, vegetation, and roots. The clumps are suspended at a height of 10–19 m (33–62 ft) from the ground and hollows are excavated by the spiderhunters by removing vegetation from the clumps. The nest bowls have a diameter of 7 cm (2.8 in) and a depth of 4 cm (1.6 in), while the entrance to the hollow has a diameter of 5 cm (2.0 in). Whitehead's spiderhunter's nest structure is unique within its genus and is only shared with the closely related yellow-eared and naked-faced spiderhunters; other spiderhunters usually make nests out of leaves, lined with fibrous material, entered through a narrow opening, and attached to the underside of banana leaves or palm fronds. Clutches consist of two chicks, which are fed berries and arthropods.
Conservation
- Population trend
- declining
Photos
Distribution
Bird Calls
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