Pied butcherbird

Appearance

Like other butcherbirds, the pied butcherbird is stockily built with short legs and a relatively large head. It ranges from 28 to 32 cm long, averaging around 31 cm, with a 51 cm wingspan and weight of around 120 g. The wings are fairly long, extending to half-way along the tail when folded. Its plumage is almost wholly black and white, with very little difference between the sexes. It has a black head, nape and throat, giving it the appearance of a black hood, which is bounded by a white neck collar, which is around 3.2 cm wide. The black hood is slightly glossy in bright light, can fade a little with age, and is slightly duller and more brownish in the adult female. The neck collar in the female is slightly narrower at around 2.5 cm and is a grey-white rather than white. Several stiff black bristles up to 1.5 cm long arise from the lower lores. The upper mantle and a few of the front scapulars are white, contrasting sharply with the black lower mantle and the rest of the scapulars. The rump is pale grey, and the upper tail coverts are white. The tail is rather long, with a rounded or wedge-shaped tip. It has twelve rectrices, which are black in colour. The tail tip and outer wing feathers are white. The underparts are white. The eyes are a dark brown, the legs grey and the bill a pale bluish grey tipped with black, with a prominent hook at the end.

The juvenile pied butcherbird has dark brown instead of black plumage, lacks the pale collar and has a cream to buff lores, chin, and upper throat, becoming more brown on the lower throat and breast. Its underparts are off-white to cream. The bill is dark brown. In its first year, it moults into its first immature plumage, which resembles that of the juvenile, but has a more extensive dark brown throat. Its bill is blue-grey with a dark brown or blackish tip.

Naming

The black hood helps distinguish the pied butcherbird from other butcherbirds, the Australian magpie and much smaller magpie-lark, the latter of which also has a much smaller beak. It has a higher-pitched call than the grey butcherbird and inhabits more open habitat. The juvenile pied butcherbird resembles the grey butcherbird: it has a buff upper throat and dark brown instead of black plumage.

Distribution

The pied butcherbird is found across much of Australia, excepting the far south of the mainland, and Tasmania. It is only rarely recorded in the Sydney Basin, and absent from the Illawarra, Southern Tablelands and south coast of New South Wales. In Victoria it is found along the Murray Valley and west of Chiltern. In South Australia it is not found in the northeast of the state, nor on the Adelaide plain. It is found across Western Australia, though is absent from the Great Sandy Desert. It is generally sedentary across most of its range, with minimal seasonal movements.

It is a bird of open sclerophyll forests, eucalypt and acacia woodlands and scrublands, with sparse or no understory, or low cover with shrubs such as "Triodia", "Lomandra" or "Hibbertia". It is less common in mallee scrub. In arid areas and northern Australia, it is more restricted to woodland alongside rivers and billabongs. It has become more common in southwest Western Australia with land clearing, though has become rare around Darwin on account of urban development.

Status

The pied butcherbird is listed as being a species of least concern by the IUCN, on account of its large range and stable population with no evidence of any significant decline.

Behavior

The pied butcherbird is thought to be monogamous, though its breeding habits have not been much studied. There is evidence of cooperative breeding, with some mated pairs being assisted by up to several other helper birds. These individuals help feed young and defend the nest. These pairs or small groups defend their territory from intruders, mobbing and chasing raptors and other birds, and occasionally dogs or people. They may attack animals that venture too close to the nest, with one bird coming front-on while the other may approach from behind.

The maximum age recorded from banding has been 22 years 1.7 months, for an individual banded in Rockhampton in June 1988 and recovered in August 2010–7 km away. The bird was injured and had to be euthanased.

Habitat

The pied butcherbird is found across much of Australia, excepting the far south of the mainland, and Tasmania. It is only rarely recorded in the Sydney Basin, and absent from the Illawarra, Southern Tablelands and south coast of New South Wales. In Victoria it is found along the Murray Valley and west of Chiltern. In South Australia it is not found in the northeast of the state, nor on the Adelaide plain. It is found across Western Australia, though is absent from the Great Sandy Desert. It is generally sedentary across most of its range, with minimal seasonal movements.

It is a bird of open sclerophyll forests, eucalypt and acacia woodlands and scrublands, with sparse or no understory, or low cover with shrubs such as "Triodia", "Lomandra" or "Hibbertia". It is less common in mallee scrub. In arid areas and northern Australia, it is more restricted to woodland alongside rivers and billabongs. It has become more common in southwest Western Australia with land clearing, though has become rare around Darwin on account of urban development.

Reproduction

Across most of its range, the pied butcherbird can generally be found breeding from winter to summer; eggs are laid anywhere from July to December, but mostly from September to November, and young can be present in the nest from August till February. There are reports of breeding outside these months, however. The nest is constructed of dry sticks with a finer material such as dried grass, black roly poly, bark and leaves forming a cup-shaped interior. It is located in the fork of a tree, often among foliage and inconspicuous. The clutch consists of two to five oval eggs blotched with brown over a base colour of various shades of pale greyish- or brownish-green. Larger clutches have been recorded, such as at Jandowae in Queensland, where two pairs laid eggs and were sharing incubation duties. Eggs of subspecies "nigrogularis" are larger, at around 33 mm long by 24 mm wide, while those of subspecies "picatus" are around 31 mm long by 22 mm wide. Incubation takes 19 to 21 days, with the eggs laid up to 48 hours apart and hatching at a similar interval. Like all passerines, the chicks are altricial—they are born naked or sparsely covered in down and blind. They spend anywhere from 25 to 33 days in the nest before fledging, though may leave the nest early if disturbed. They are fed by parents and helper birds. Brood parasites recorded include the pallid cuckoo and channel-billed cuckoo.

Food

The pied butcherbird is carnivorous, and eats insects such as beetles, bugs, ants, caterpillars, and cockroaches, as well as spiders and worms. It preys on vertebrates up to the size of such animals as frogs, skinks, mice, and small birds such as the silvereye, house sparrow, double-barred finch, willie wagtail, and grey teal duckling. It has been looked upon favourably by farmers as it hunts such pests as grasshoppers and rodents. Some individuals look for scraps around houses and picnic sites, and can become tame enough to be fed by people, either by hand or by tossing food in the air. The pied butcherbird also eats fruit, such as those of sandpaper figs, native cherry, African boxthorn and grapes, and nectar of the Darwin woollybutt.

The pied butcherbird often perches on a fencepost, stump or branch while foraging for prey. It generally pounces on victims on the ground and eats them there. At times, it may hop or run along hunting ground-based food, and occasionally seize flying insects. It generally forages alone, or occasionally in pairs. The pied butcherbird has been observed hunting collaboratively with the Australian hobby, either picking off common starlings or rufous-throated honeyeaters disturbed by the larger hobby, or flushing out small birds from bushes, which the larger bird then hunts. The pied butcherbird sometimes stores food items by impaling them on a stick or on barbed wire, or shoving them in a nook or crevice.

Cultural

Several Australian and international composers have been inspired by and written music incorporating the songs of the pied butcherbird, including Henry Tate, David Lumsdaine, Don Harper, Olivier Messiaen, Elaine Barkin, John Rodgers, Ron Nagorcka, and John Williamson. In the dance 'Bird Song' by Siobhan Davies, the main central solo was accompanied by the call of a pied butcherbird and this same sound provided inspiration to much of the dance, including the improvisational aspects. Composer and researcher Hollis Taylor has studied pied butcherbird song for 12 years, and has released a double CD called "Absolute Bird" based on fifty-plus pied butcherbird nocturnal solo songs. Taylor's 'Is Birdsong Music? Outback Encounters with an Australian Songbird' offers portraits of the remote locations where the species is found.

In the now extinct Warray language spoken on the Adelaide River in Arnhem Land, "Cracticus nigrogularis" was known as lopolopo.