Falcunculidae – Shriketits

The shriketits are a group of three species of birds in the genus Falcunculus, all of which are endemic to Australia where they inhabit open eucalypt forest and woodland.

Males are larger than females in wing length, weight, and bill-size. Males have black throats, while females have olive green throats, and both sexes have bold black and white markings on the face.

They feed mainly on insects, spiders and, sometimes, particularly during the breeding season, young birds. Thistle seeds are also taken. They have a parrot-like bill, used for distinctive bark-stripping behaviour, which gains them access to invertebrates. The bird is unobtrusive, and the sound of the bark strips being torn off trees is often what provides an indication of their presence. They nest high in a eucalyptus tree, in a fork of a branch, both sexes sharing the incubation and the rearing of the young. There may be two broods.

The three different species of this distinctive Australian passerine occupy the three corners of the continent (NW, SW, and SE) that support open, seasonally dry woods. One of the many Australian birds that English settlers named after their more familiar British birds, this bird does indeed have a similarly large head and heavy hooked bill of a shrike. Coloured like a large tit, it also forages like one, actively gleaning insects from branches and leaves and often using its formidable bill to tear bark apart in search of prey. With a high whistled long-toned song that is characteristic of so many Australasian corvoids, Shrike-tits also have soft jay-like contact calls that the adult birds give to each other and their offspring.

The three species recognised, with disjunct ranges. Northern Shriketit Falcunculus whitei, or White’s Shrike-tit (Campbell, AJ, 1910) is found in the Kimberley region of north-western Australia and the Top End of the Northern Territory.

The Western Shriketit Falcunculus leucogaster, or White-bellied Shrike-tit (Gould, 1838) is sparsely distributed in south-western Western Australia.

Eastern Shriketit Falcunculus frontatus (Latham, 1801) is found in south-eastern Australia from the Lower South-East of South Australia, coastally and in the Murray-Darling Basin to south-eastern Queensland, with some scattered occurrences further north and west in Queensland.