Black Butcherbird Identification Challenge

ID CHALLENGE 4 September P Plate by Janine Duffy

Who is this handsome figure? Seen at East Point, Darwin Northern Territory on the wonderful Mangrove Boardwalk, in August. Check out this amazing site: https://ebird.org/hotspot/L2968446

Size: medium to large for a perching bird (smaller than an Aus Magpie, but bigger than a Mudlark/Peewee)

Behaviour: hanging about in the tops of the small trees on the landward side of the mangroves. Being fairly quiet. There was another nearby.

Black birds can be hard because all you’ve got to go on is shape.

Black Butcherbird, East Point Mangrove Boardwalk Darwin, NT by Janine Duffy

Solution:

Black Butcherbird Cracticus quoyi

Being all black, and of medium size, in Darwin, this bird could have been a Spangled Drongo, a Torresian Crow, a Shining Flycatcher, a Black-tailed Treecreeper, or an Eastern Koel.

Shining Flycatcher is a bit too small and it’s beak is too fine. Spangled Drongo, Eastern Koel & Torresian Crow have strong beaks, but not at long as this. Black-tailed Treecreeper is smaller, with a finer beak and an upright posture.

Many of you could see that this was a butcherbird, even if you had never seen or heard of a Black Butcherbird. The shape is so distinctive. Bill is huge – almost as long as the head is wide, deep and hooked. The upper mandible droops at the tip, and the lower mandible is almost straight (unlike a kingfisher which has a straight upper, and lower mandible curves up to it). The head is large for the size of the body, and the upright posture and small legs and feet show this to be a perching, arboreal bird rather than a walking, ground bird like a magpie. The body is slender, not chunky like a crow or currawong.

The only hint of colour on this bird is the blue-grey base to the bill. It’s a particular Artamid feature – all our woodswallows have it, magpie has it, and all the butcherbirds have it. It is, I think, highly noticeable in the field.

Butcherbirds are smallish members of the Magpie-Currawong-Woodswallow family: the Artamidae. Black Butcherbird is the largest butcherbird, and the NT subspecies spaldingi shown here is the largest of them.