Australian Magpies, Currawongs and Butcherbirds, the 'no nonsense' birds'

In this post I want to delve into the world of one of our most familiar bird families, comprising big birds, mostly black and white, and generally pretty tough. They include some of our most familiar birds, and most loved, including the 2017 inaugural winner of the Guardian Australia/Birdlife Australia Bird of the Year poll. Ironically they also include some of our most feared and even hated birds - including that glorious winner!

Australian Magpie, the 2017 Bird of the Year, looking menacing; for a few weeks a year 
some breeding males become hyper-aggressive to people or dogs passing through their
 territory, though each one seems to have a specific profile in their mind of who 
deserves to be attacked.

OK, a bit of family background (though you should skip the next two paragraphs if you'd prefer). These three bird groups, plus the woodswallows and the New Guinea peltops, make up the family Artamidae ('the butchers'). The name comes from the woodswallow genus, Artamus, which means either a butcher or murderer. It seems a bit over the top, but the father of modern taxonomy, Linnaeus, back in 1771 received a specimen of a White-breasted Woodswallow from the Phillipines. He thought it was one of the shrikes, Old World predators. Their genus was and is Lanius, another word for butcher, so when in 1817 the esteemed French ornithologist Louis Vieillot recognised the error and gave woodswallows their own genus he used another 'butcher' word in Artamus. 

It was to be another 90 years however before William Pycraft of the British Museum suggested a strong connection between the woodswallows and the apparently quite dissimilar Australian magpies and their cousins, based on skeleton evidence. This was largely ignored for another 70 years until Allan McEvey of the Victorian Museum came to the same conclusion, which was then backed up by DNA evidence. Anyway the point of all this is that now the new expanded family had been recognised it needed a new name, which had to be based on the first genus in the family to named. This was Artamus, so the former magpie/currawong/butcherbird family became part of Artamidae.  

If you sensibly decided two paras ago that you didn't need all that, welcome back. The family arose in Australia some 45 million years ago, and subsequently the ancestral woodswallows split off, then the New Guinean peltops, leaving the ancestors of the sub-group we're looking at today. As the country dried, the currawong ancestors parted ways with the butcherbirds-magpies. The tricky bit is that the next development wasn't a clear split between the magpies and butcherbirds, but the ancestor of both the magpies and the Black Butcherbird Melloria quoyi divided off, leaving only the main butcherbird group. 

Black Butcherbird, Atherton Tableland, tropical Queensland. It would be
clearer and simpler if we hadn't called this one a butcherbird - as I just said,
it's closer to the Australian magpies than to the true butcherbirds - but
the similarity was too obvious to be ignored.

In addition to the groups discussed here, there are 11 species of woodswallows (including five in Australia) and two species of peltops. Our focus today is on nine species; the Australian Magpie Gymnorhina tibicen, three currawongs (all Australian) and five Australian species of butcherbird (with the above proviso re the Black Butcherbird). There are also two butcherbirds which are restricted to New Guinea and nearby islands. All nine are medium-large songbirds with strong straight bills, with a hooked tip for the butcherbirds. In the magpie and butcherbirds this beak is silvery-bluish with a dark tip, but is all dark in the currawongs. Their plumage is mostly black and white, with some grey in some of them. 

Pied Bucherbird Cracticus nigrogularis, Tjoritja/West MacDonnells, central Australia.

Pied Currawong Strepera graculina, National Botanic Gardens, Canberra.

They all have powerful and, to my ears at least, mostly melodious songs and they call often. 

Grey Butcherbird Cracticus torquatus, Nowra, south coast NSW.

Pied Butcherbird, Bourke, northern central NSW.
(Disclosure; this bird has probably my favourite bird call in the world.)

Black Currawong Strepera fuliginosa, Tahune Forest, southern Tasmania. Currawongs are the only
members of the group carrying an Indigenous name. Like several of the Indigenous bird names
we know about, it is clearly onomatopoeic for the clear yodelling calls.There is uncertainty as
to whether it derives from the Jagawa language of south-east Queensland (which seems
better supported) or the Daruk language of the Sydney region. Either way it didn't appear
in English until well into the 20th century; before that they carried the awkward
combination names of bell-magpie or crow-shrike.

The butcherbirds and magpies are primarily predators of invertebrates and small mammals, reptiles and birds. The currawongs, despite their reputation in some quarters, are primarily fruit-eaters but will also hunt, especially when feeding chicks. All however can be very opportunistic with regard to food sources.

Pied Currawong eating Firethorn berries, Pyracantha sp, Canberra.
This is an invasive weed of nature reserves in Canberra and currawongs 
are major vectors of the seeds.

Male Magpie with freshly killed House Sparrow Passer domesticus, just over the
road from us in suburban Canberra.

This one really surprised me! Unfortunately it took me a little while to get a clear angle,
by which time the prey had been largely demolished. But this Pied Currawong, at the
Cotter Reserve just west of Canberra, had caught and was dismembering and eating
a Yabby Cherax destructor, a common south-eastern freshwater crayfish.

Butcherbirds and magpies in particular can become very accustomed to scavenging for food from outdoor eating areas, and accepting offerings from households (not from us, by the way).  

Pied Butcherbird showing unambiguous interest in the breakfast menu at Robin Hood
Station, near Cobbold Gorge, north Queensland gulf country.

Magpies eating seed (meant for parrots) on the NSW south coast. This was in winter
when preferred food sources would have been harder to find. Seeds would not normally
be part of their fairly strictly animal diet, but they can and do adapt when they must.

Coincidentally (referring to the somewhat convoluted story of Linnaeus confusing the woodswallow with the shrikes and what followed) early Sydney settlers widely used the name 'butcher-bird' from early on for the same birds that we do; this was what they had called shrikes in England. The connection was the habit of both shrikes and butcherbirds of storing surplus food in branch forks (which I've seen) and even on thorns or spikes of dead wood. Later in the 19th century barbed wire was adopted as an acceptable substitute for thorns. 

 

'Magpie' was likewise adopted directly from a familiar unrelated bird 'back home', the Eurasian Magpie Pica pica, which is a crow. However it is also black and white and that was enough. As we've seen, only the Currawongs retain an Indigenous name.

All build substantial stick nests and both parents feed the chicks and, especially the butcherbirds and magpies, defend them fiercely.  

Pied Currawong feeding large nestlings at Ginninderra Falls, west of Canberra.

There is a considerable amount of quite justifiable concern over the annual ritual of people having to evade (or failing to do so) the determined swooping of male Magpies during the spring breeding season. There is also a certain amount of inevitable urban mythology however. It seems that only about 10% of males are this aggressive, and it is unclear what determines it, though prior negative experiences are assumed to be behind it. A given male may be quite specific in his targeting, focussing perhaps on cyclists, or even singling out posties on cycles, or children or dogs. I confess that I don't cycle as much as I used to in spring after a couple of somewhat bloody encounters, though none of the territories in our immediate neighbourhood are danger zones. While I've not had a bad experience with butcherbirds, a good friend in Port Macquarie in north coastal NSW is regularly under fire when the local Grey Butcherbirds (but not the Pied Butcherbirds, which are also present) are nesting. With their hooked bills I suspect that they might be a worse proposition than the magpies. It might seem surprising, giving their fierce glare, intimidating beak and general heft, but currawongs are not usually seen as a threat in the same way as the magpies and butcherbirds are. 

Well, let me conclude by more formally introducing the species.

As I've alluded above, the Australian Magpie is one of the most familiar and recognised birds in the country and their powerful warbling territorial calls are among the most familiar bird calls in Australia. They are found throughout except for the north-western deserts, the Top End and the tip of Cape York Peninsula. There are up to nine subspecies recognised in Australia (plus another in a small area of southern Papua New Guinea just across the Torres Strait from Cape York Peninsula), grouped for convenience into three main plumage types, all relating to the feathers of the back.

The dominant form across most of the country is the Black-backed, where only the neck is white (for males) or grey (for females). There is also a white rump (mostly covered by the wings when not in flight) and a white bar across the wings.  

Male Black-backed Magpie, Wagga Wagga.

Female Black-backed Magpie, Canberra.

 Immature birds have mottled grey feathers instead of black. 

Immature Black-backed Magpie, Emerald, central Queensland.

In the south-east however the dominant form is the White-backed, named for the obvious reason.

Female White-backed Magpie, National Botanic Gardens, Canberra.

It has been proposed that this form arose in Tasmania. During the last glacial period but one, about 100,000 years ago when seas were lower and the Bass Strait was a plain, magpies arrived from the mainland and were then isolated for the next 70,000 years until the next glaciation. In this time the white-backed mutation appeared, and entered the mainland when the seas fell again. This is plausible but not universally accepted and last I read definitive proof was not available. 

 

What isn't disputed is that the white-backed birds are steadily extending north along the coast, breeding with the black-backed as they push. In my 40-odd years in Canberra I've seen the hybrid zone move north from the southern ACT to about Canberra.  The white-backeds are slightly larger and it seems likely that this gives them enough advantage to expand into the black-backeds range. However there is not a widening band of hybrid birds, but a northward-rolling hybrid zone about 120km wide. Nor are hybrids simply grey, but show a full range of mixture of black and white back feathers. Here are a couple of examples of hybrids, both from Canberra.

 

In south-western Australia males look like the white-backed form, but females have a distinctive mottled back, with the feathers edged in white.

Female Western Magpie, Dryandra forest. (A poor scan of an old, pre-digital, slide. Sorry.)

Based on the key work of Robert Carrick of CSIRO in the 1950s and 60s, several ‘levels’ of territory are recognised, ranging from optimum habitat, occupied by experienced successful birds which nearly always succeed in raising young, through more and more marginal territories, to the non-territorial non-breeding pool of ‘flock birds’. For magpies, 'optimal territory' means open foraging areas and tall trees for breeding. Such a complex system means that there are always ‘reserve’ birds waiting to fill gaps in territories, and birds gaining experience while waiting to get into a good territory. 

As suggested earlier, the distinctive Black Butcherbird of tropical Queensland and the Northern Territory plus most of New Guinea is actually more closely related to the magpies than to other butcherbirds, and a name other than butcherbird for it would make things easier, but common names don't work that way (despite periodic attempts to force them to do so). This bird has a powerful deeply pitched voice; 'organ-like' is often used to describe it and I probably can't do better than that. It is found in rainforests (like the photo above) but also in mangroves and riverine vegetation, and in places like Cairns and Darwin it has taken readily to urban living but we still seem to know surprisingly little of its breeding habits.

Black Butcherbird, Cairns Botanic Gardens. Perhaps more than other butcherbirds it spends time 
foraging for food on the ground, or 'perch and pounce' hunting, but unlike them it also spends time
hunting up in the canopy.

The other four Australian butcherbirds (plus two found only in New Guinea and nearby islands) are all in the genus Cracticus; two are found across most of Australia, the other two have more limited ranges in the tropics.They are relatively small but compact and powerful little predators of invertebrates, small mammals, birds and reptiles and, as I've mentioned, often tend to take more food than they can immediately use and store the surplus in branch forks and on sharp objects. I've heard them described as being like a kingfisher, and I can see why.

 

In general I associate Pied Butcherbirds with drier, more open inland plains and Grey Butcherbirds with denser vegetation and nearer the coast but it's really not that simple. North of Sydney the Pieds can come to the coast and the two species often overlap, though Greys seem to be the only one in mallee country. We have Grey Butcherbirds in the adjacent park to us in Canberra's suburban Weston Creek, and they are common right  up to the Snow Gums in the mountains, but Pieds only rarely visit the territory. They are fairly regularly sighted in an hour or so drive to the north-west of here though. 

 

Both Pieds and Greys have loud carrying calls, but the Grey's strident warble, while undeniably pleasant, doesn't have for me the breath-taking beauty of the Pied's performance. That always makes me stop to listen, and to me is one of the defining sounds of 'the west'. It is pure and rich and seemingly every note is considered (yes I'm doubtless being anthropomorphic but it's hard not to be when using words to describe a totally different sound). Moreover it can seem like a complete performance sometimes, stretching up with the high notes and bending down for the low ones. It can be heard by day or night, especially with a full moon.

Pied Butcherbird in banksia heathland at Lake Logue Nature Reserve north of Perth.
They are dramatically black and white, with full black hood and black back, and
there should be no confusion with the Grey Butcherbird.

Grey Butcherbird foraging on the ground at Ulladulla Heathland Reserve,
south coast NSW. The white throat and grey back are clear here.

Where confusion could arise is with immature birds, but even here the 'shadow' of the hood is fairly evident in young Pieds.

Immature Pied Butcherbird, Longreach Waterhole, in the semi-arid zone 700k south of Darwin.
The hood is still pale brown at this age.

Immature Grey Butcherbird in our small Canberra back yard.
The cap and back are brown rather than white and the underside is mottled
with no colouration under the chin.

On Cape York Peninsula in far north Queensland is a third species, the Black-backed Butcherbird Cracticus mentalis which is also found across the Torres Strait in southern New Guinea. In Queensland it is a bird of the savannah woodlands; around our camp in Rinyirru NP, north-west of Cooktown, they seemed to occupy the dense stands of paperbarks Melaleuca sp. by Sweetwater Lagoon.

Black-backed Butcherbird, Rinyirru NP. I just couldn't get any closer to them than this
and they retreated to foliage when I tried to approach. However, as unsatisfactory as it is,
this photo does show its characteristics. It has a black cap and white throat like a Grey,
but a much wider white collar, and the rest is black and white. The lack of a full black
hood and the extensive white in the wings tell us that it's not a Pied either.

The Silver-backed Butcherbird Cracticus argenteus is found across the Top End and the Kimberley, in riverine forest and vine scrub, and thickets in sandstone gorges. It is not particularly uncommon and I've seen it but for some reason never taken a photo. I'll have to rectify that one day. It's like a Grey Butcherbird but with pale silver-grey back and black wings.

Silver-backed Butcherbird, courtesy Graham Winterflood on Wikipedia.

Alone among the three groups we're exploring today, only the currawongs (three species) are all restricted to Australia.

They are large songbirds with heavy bills and staring yellow eyes and smaller birds tend to avoid them. We spent time at a series of hides facing raised water troughs in the mallee at Gluepot Reserve north of the Murray River in South Australia, and when a group of Grey Currawongs arrived they rapidly had the facilities to themselves. It felt as though we were watching a group of threatening bikies bursting into a suburban bar. Yes, being anthropomorphic again, sorry!

Grey Currawongs Strepera versicolor, Gluepot Reserve. Yes I know they're black, not grey, but
this is a confusingly variable species, with distinctive subspecies. We'll come back to that.

The most familiar currawong to most Australians, and the first one encountered by the British settlers, was the Pied Currawong Strepera graculina, found right along the east coast of the mainland almost to the tip of Cape York Peninsula, but for some reason they've not crossed the narrow strait to New Guinea. At one stage though they made a far more extensive ocean crossing to Lord Howe Island where they founded an endemic subspecies.  

Juvenile Lord Howe Island Pied Currawong. Though it is less obvious in this youngster,
this subspecies has less white in the plumage and a more massive bill.

Pied Currawongs are all black except for white rumps, vents, tail tips and a broad band across the wing in flight. They are loud and call much of the time; one of their commonest calls around here (Canberra) was interpreted for me once as a plummy falsetto 'hark-hark-the-lark', and I can't hear it any other way now. There are various other carrying calls too, including one that sounds disturbingly like a wolf whistle. Locally they traditionally all moved up into the mountains to breed.

Pied Currawong investigating a bird hide at Jerrabomberra Wetlands NR in Canberra.
They are inquisitive and without evident fear of humans.

When I arrived here in 1980 Pied Currawongs nesting in Canberra was almost unknown, but they've adapted to our gardens with their year-round supplies of berries and many now stay down to breed. This raises antipathy from many people who are shocked when a small bird's nest in their yard is robbed of eggs or chicks by currawongs. There are a couple of observations I'd like need to make about this. Firstly they are primarily fruit-eaters, and most of their meat comes from insects, especially stick insects in the canopy of eucalypt forests. It is only when feeding growing chicks that they turn strongly to nest-robbing to provide protein. Secondly it is because we've offered them an easy living in town that many now take advantage of it, so we can witness behaviour that would otherwise be taking place out of sight up in the mountains. Up there of course all of the robbed nests would be of native bird species, while in suburbia many of the morsels fed to the currawong broods are of exotic species, such as blackbirds and sparrows. (It may be seen as unfortunate that hollow-nesting exotics such as starlings and mynas are largely safe from nest predation.)  

Grey Currawongs coexist with Pieds around here, but are far less common - intuitively it feels like their number ratios are about one to a hundred, but don't quote me! Their calls are very different, with the Grey's being a clear ringing note. They are indeed ashy grey.

Grey Currawong at the Namadgi National Park's Visitor Information Centre
south of Canberra..

However the Greys lack the Pied Currawong's white rump. This becomes relevant in western Victoria where the Grey Currawong race is black (the same race as the birds at the Gluepot hide photo above) and both they and the Pied Currawongs in that part of the world have very little white in the wing. 

Grey Currawong at Glenelg River NP in far south-western Victoria, black like a
Pied Currawong but clearly showing the lack of a white rump.

Further west across the mallee country and into Western Australia they are noticeably browner.

'Brown' Grey Currawong in Dhilba Guuranda-Innes NP, at the foot of 
Yorke Peninsula in South Australia.

The Tasmanian race of the Grey Currawong is also black and has a distinctly different call which the inimitable Graham Pizzey in his classic bird guide describes as 'like striking [an] anvil', hence its local name of Clinking Currawong. This is fortunate for us, because in Tasmania distinguishing the Grey Currawong is even trickier with regard to plumage. In the east and north of the state they coexist with the Tasmanian endemic Black Currawong whose body is all black, so the Grey's lack of white rump doesn't help us here. However the Grey's broad white wing flashes and white vent are good indicators. The Black Currawong Strepera fuliginosa really is all black except for the tail tip and wing tips and its call too is more like a Pied Currawong, rather than the 'clink' of the Grey. It is found throughout the state.

Black Currawong checking for handouts (a typical currawong characteristic) 
at Tahune Forest, south of Hobart. 

So there we have it, a brief gathering of a subfamily of loud, imposing and, in my opinion at least, fascinating Australian birds. If you're reading this in Australia I'm sure you're already familiar with at least some of them and perhaps you've learnt something you didn't know, and are now glad that you do. I hope so. In any case, thanks for being here. 

 

Magpie against the moon, Arkaroola, far northern Ikara/Flinders Ranges, South Australia.

NEXT POSTING THURSDAY 24 SEPTEMBER

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