Eastern Shrike-tit
Falcunculus frontatus
Small bird with short, heavy bill. Green above, yellow below, with bold black-and-white head pattern. Male has black chin, female dark greenish. Found across south eastern and eastern Australia. Inhabits eucalypt woodlands and some wetter woodlands, where it tears bark noisily, looking for food. Song is loud and includes a descending three-part whistle. Also an accomplished mimic of many other species’ songs. Formerly treated as one of the geographically isolated subspecies of Crested Shrike-tit.
Identification
The eastern shriketit is 15–19 cm (5.9–7.5 in) in overall length, with a wingspan of 24–29 cm (9.4–11.4 in). The males weigh 26.5–40 g (0.9–1.4 oz) and the females 23–33 g (0.8–1.2 oz).<p>The eastern shriketit has a mantle, back and rump that are olive-brown to olive-green. The underparts are yellow. The head features broad white patches separated by a thick black eyeline with another black band running over the crown from the bill to the nape. The male has an erectable crest. It has a large bill with which to lever and strip bark. The throat of the male is black, whereas that of the female is olive-brown. Juveniles have a similar head pattern to adults but the throat, breast and belly are buffy-white, and the wings are browner.<p>The call of the eastern shriketit is a weak, mellow and mournful whistle, sounding like whiert, whit-whit, wheeir. It also makes repeated stuttering or chuckling calls described as "knock-at-the-door", and can perfectly mimic many species within its habitat.<p>The golden whistler (Pachycephala pectoralis) occupies a similar range and habitat to the eastern shriketit from which it is distinguished by a mostly black head, white throat with black breast-band, narrow bill and yellow plumage extending across the nape.
Taxonomy
The eastern shriketit was first described by the English ornithologist John Latham in 1801 under the binomial name Lanius frontatus.It was named Falcunculus flavigulus by John Gould, which he quickly realised was a frontatus in female plumage.<p>Three subspecies of the crested shriketit (Falcunculus frontatus) were recognised as distinct species based on their widely disjunct distributions and plumage differences, so that F. frontatus was split from F. whitei and F. leucogaster following Schodde and Mason (1999). In appearance, the eastern shriketit differs from the northern shriketit (F. whitei), which has broad yellow wing-margins and brownish-grey wing coverts, and the western shriketit (F. leucogaster), which has a white belly, olive-grey wing-coverts and yellow-edged remiges.<p>The generic name Falcunculus is the diminutive of Late Latin falco 'falcon' and the specific epithet frontalis is from Latin frons 'forehead'.<p>The species is monotypic.
- Scientific name
- Falcunculus frontatus
- Authority
- (Latham, 1801)
- Order
- Passeriformes
- Family
- Falcunculidae
- Genus
- Falcunculus
Range and habitat
The eastern shriketit is endemic to Australia. It is found in the Atherton Tablelands of tropical Queensland, southward through New South Wales and Victoria, including the Murray-Darling basin, to the Mount Lofty Ranges and Fleurieu Peninsula of South Australia. It is commonest in north-central and coastal Victoria and east of the Great Dividing Range in New South Wales; its presence in Queensland is more scattered.<p>Its preferred habitat is the canopy of eucalypt forests and open woodlands, and to a lesser extent stands of mallee, cypress-pine, coastal tea-tree and banksia. It is also found in trees along rivers and occasionally in rainforests.<p>It is sedentary or locally nomadic.
- Migration
- Resident species
Behavior
Migration pattern: Resident species.
Conservation
Population trend: declining.
- Population trend
- declining
Photos
Distribution
Bird Calls
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