Scrub-bird

Taxobox
name = Scrub-birds


image_width = 240px
image_caption = "A. clamosus"
regnum = Animalia
phylum = Chordata
classis = Aves
ordo = Passeriformes
subordo = Passeri
familia = Atrichornithidae
familia_authority = Stejneger, 1885
genus = "Atrichornis"
genus_authority = Stejneger, 1885
subdivision_ranks = Species
subdivision =
*"Atrichornis rufescens"
*"Atrichornis clamosus"

Scrub-birds are shy, secretive, ground-dwelling birds of the family Atrichornithidae. There are just two species, one of them rare and very restricted in its range, the other so rare that until 1961 it was thought to be extinct. Both are native to Australia.

The scrub-bird family is ancient and is understood to be most closely related to the lyrebirds, and probably also the bowerbirds and treecreepers. All four families originated with the great corvid radiation of the Australia-New Guinea region.

The entire world population of the Noisy Scrub-bird was estimated at 40 to 45 birds in 1962. Conservation efforts succeeded in increasing the population to around 400 birds by the mid-1980s, and they have subsequently been reintroduced to several sites, but remain endangered. In 2002 the population had recovered to around 1,200 birds.

Description

Both living species are about the same size as a Common Starling (roughly 20 cm long) and cryptically coloured in drab browns and blacks. They occupy dense undergrowth—the Rufous Scrub-bird in temperate rain forests near the Queensland-New South Wales border, the Noisy Scrub-bird in heaths and scrubby gullies in coastal Western Australia—and are adept at scuttling mouse-like under cover to avoid noticecite book |editor=Forshaw, Joseph|author= Smith. G.T.|year=1991|title=Encyclopaedia of Animals: Birds|publisher= Merehurst Press|location=London|pages= 170|isbn= 1-85391-186-0] . They run fast but their flight is feeble.

The males' calls, however, are powerful: ringing and metallic, with a ventriloquial quality, so loud as to be heard from a long distance in heavy scrub and almost painful at close range. Females build a domed nest close to the ground and take sole responsibility for raising the young.

pecies of Atrichornithidae

* Rufous Scrub-bird, "Atrichornis rufescens"
* Noisy Scrub-bird, "Atrichornis clamosus"

References