Currawong

This article is about the bird genus. For the Sydney beach, see Currawong Beach, New South Wales. For the Melbourne park, see Currawong Bush Park.

Currawong
Black Currawong, Fortesque Bay, Tasman Peninsula
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Passeriformes
Family:	Artamidae
Genus:	Strepera
Species
Strepera graculina Strepera versicolor Strepera fuliginosa

Currawongs are three species of medium-sized passerine birds belonging to the genus Strepera in the family Artamidae native to Australasia. These are the Grey Currawong (Strepera versicolor), Pied Currawong (S. graculina), and Black Currawong (S. fuliginosa). The common name comes from the call of the familiar Pied Currawong of eastern Australia and is onomatopoeic. They were formerly known as Crow-shrikes or Bell-magpies.

Despite their resemblance to crows and ravens, they are only distantly related to the corvidae, instead belonging to an Afro-Asian radiation of birds of family Malaconotidae.

The true currawongs are a little larger than the Australian Magpie, somewhat smaller than most ravens, but broadly similar in appearance. They are easily distinguished by their yellow eyes, in contrast to the red eyes of a magpie and white eyes of Australian crows and ravens. Currawongs are also characterised by the hooked tips of their long, sharply pointed beaks.^[1] They are not as terrestrial as the Magpie and have shorter legs. They are omnivorous, foraging in foliage, on tree trunks and limbs, and on the ground, taking insects and larvae (often dug out from under the bark of trees), fruit, and the nestlings of other birds. They are distinguishable from magpies and crows by their comical flight style in amongst foliage, appearing to almost fall about from branch to branch as if they were inept flyers.

Taxonomy and evolution

Ornithologist Richard Bowdler Sharpe held the currawongs to be more closely related to crows and ravens than the Australian Magpie and butcherbirds, and duly placed them in the Corvidae.^[2] A review by ornithologist John Albert Leach of the family Cracticidae in 1914 where he had studied their musculature found that all three genera were closely related.^[3] Ornithologists Charles Sibley and Jon Ahlquist recognised the close relationship between the woodswallows and the butcherbirds and relatives in 1985, and combined them into a Cracticini clade,^[4] which later became the family Artamidae.^[5] Within the family, currawongs belong to the subfamily Cracticinae, which also includes the Australian Magpie and the butcherbird: about 20 species in all.

The family Artamidae has its greatest diversity in Australia, which suggests the radiation of its insectivorous and scavenger members to occupy various niches took place there. The butcherbirds became predators of small animals much like the northern hemisphere shrikes, while the Australian Magpie became a predominantly ground-hunting omnivore, and the currawongs hunt in living and fallen trees on the main, scavenging and hunting insects and small vertebrates and occupying the niche of many Eurasian corvids in Australia.^[6]

They are protected in Australia under the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974.

Species and races

Although there are several distinct forms, the number of species has varied between two and seven, with three currently recognised. Several subspecies of the Grey Currawong are fairly distinctive and described on that species page.

• S. fuliginosa - Black Jay or Black Currawong
  • S. fuliginosa colei - King Island Black Currawong
  • S. fuliginosa parvior - Flinders Island Black Currawong
• S. graculina - Pied Currawong
  • S. graculina graculina
  • S. graculina ashbyi - Western Victorian Pied Currawong
  • S. graculina crissalis - Lord Howe Currawong
  • S. graculina magnirostris
  • S. graculina robinsoni
  • S. graculina nebulosa
• S. versicolor a complex, including:
  • S. versicolor versicolor - Grey Currawong
  • S. versicolor intermedia - Brown Currawong
  • S. versicolor plumbea - Grey Currawong (WA)
  • S. versicolor halmaturina - Grey Currawong (Kangaroo Island)
  • S. versicolor arguta - Clinking Currawong or Black Magpie
  • S. versicolor melanoptera - Black-winged Currawong

Description

The three currawong species are sombre-plumaged dark grey or black birds with large bills. They resemble crows and ravens, although are slimmer in build with longer tails and booted tarsi. Their flight is undulating. Male birds have longer bills than females, the reason for which is unknown but suggests differentiation in feeding technique.^[6]

Behaviour

The female builds the nest and incubates the young alone, although both parents feed them. The nests are somewhat flimsy for birds their size.^[6]

References

1. ^ Amazing Facts about Australian Birds, by Karin Cox and Steve Parish, Steve Parish Publishing, 2008.
2. ^ Sharpe, Richard Bowdler (1877). Catalogue of the Passeriformes, or Perching Birds, in the Collection of the British Museum. Coliomorphae containing the families Corvidae, Paradisaeidae, Oriolidae, Dicruridae, and Prionopidae. London: by Order of the Trustees. pp. 57–61. http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/34310#7. Retrieved 15 May 2010. 
3. ^ Leach, John Albert (1914). "The myology of the Bell-Magpie (Strepera) and its position in classification". Emu 14 (1): 2–38. doi:10.1071/MU914002. 
4. ^ Sibley, Charles G.; Ahlquist, Jon E. (1985). (fulltext) "The phylogeny and classification of Australo-Papuan passerine birds". Emu 85 (1): 1–14. doi:10.1071/MU9850001. http://www.publish.csiro.au/?act=view_file&file_id=MU9850001.pdf (fulltext). Retrieved 15 April 2009. 
5. ^ Christidis, Les; Boles, Walter E. (2008). Systematics and Taxonomy of Australian Birds. Canberra: CSIRO Publishing. p. 196. ISBN 0643065116. 
6. ^ ^{a b c} Schodde, Richard; Mason, Ian J. (1999). The Directory of Australian Birds: Passerines. A Taxonomic and Zoogeographic Atlas of the Biodiversity of Birds in Australia and its Territories. Collingwood, Australia: CSIRO Publishing. p. 532. 

External links

• Currawong videos on the Internet Bird Collection
• Sound and flight of the currawong - an artwork in a book format created by Wim de Vos and held by the Australian Library of Art, State Library of Queensland
• Birds In Backyards - Grey Currawong
• Birds In Backyards - Pied Currawong
• Birds In Backyards - Birds Behaving Badly - Pied Currawong Site on pest status of Pied Currawong