Monday 16 May 2011

Pied butcherbird

Cracticus nigrogularis

Photo by Michael Schmid (Wikipedia)

Common name:
pied butcherbird (en); verdugo-de-peito-preto (pt); cassican à gorge noire (fr); verdugo gorjinegro (es); schwarzkehl-metzgervogel (de)

Taxonomy:
Order Passeriformes
Family Cracticidae

Range:
The pied butcherbird is found throughout the Australian mainland, with the exception of most of the southern and south-eastern coastline, and the more arid areas of the inland. It is absent from Tasmania.

Size:
These birds are 32-38 cm long and weigh 140-150 g.

Habitat:
They are mostly found in dry woodlands, coastal scrub and treed farmland. They can also be found in urban parks and gardens.

Diet:
These aggressive feeders prey on small reptiles, mammals, frogs and birds, as well as large insects.

Breeding:
The breeding season of the pied butcherbird varies throughout its large range. The female constructs the nest, a bowl of sticks and twigs, lined with grasses and other finer material. It is usually built in an upright tree fork up to 5 m above the ground. There the female lays 3-5 eggs which she incubates alone for 21 days. The chicks fledge 30 days after hatching.

Conservation:
IUCN status - LC (Least Concern)
This species has a very large breeding range and is described as common over this range. The trend direction for this population is difficult to determine owing to the positive and negative processes affecting the species, but it is not considered threatened at present.

3 comments:

  1. Pedro,

    My name is Ian Montgomery and I am a wildlife photographer. The photograph of the Pied Butcherbird is mine, is being used without permission and has had the copyright watermark removed (http://www.birdway.com.au/artamini/pied_butcherbird/source/pied_butcherbird_02197.htm). There are conditions for free use of photos on my website (http://www.birdway.com.au/printpurchases.htm#free). These include a clickable link to my website and leaving the copyright message intact. Please correct these deficiencies or I'll report your blog to Google for infringement of copyright. If you copied this image from a third party please let me know the source.

    Thank you,
    Ian ian@birdway.com.au

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dear Ian, I obtaqined this image from google images, as all others that are found on this blog.
    If you feal so strongly about this I will remove your image from the blog and add another one.

    cheers

    ReplyDelete
  3. Just an aditional information.
    I didn't remove any copyright watermark, I don't even know how to do that, so I imagine someone else is using your image without permission.

    I tryed searching or the image again on google images, but couldn't find it anymore... maybe it was removed from wherever it was when I got it. Sorry I can't give you any further information, but this post had been written about 1 month ago, I have about 35 dated posts wainting to be published.

    ReplyDelete