Friends of Karkarook Park

Birds of Karkarook Park

Medium Sized Birds

Back to Main Bird Page

Scroll down for images and descriptions
or
Click on a bird name and go straight to that image and description

Australian Magpie

This striking black-and-white bird is, according to the experts, a large species of butcherbird. Apart from its widespread distribution — there are few places in Australia where magpies do not occur — the species’ familiarity is probably due equally to its pleasant carolling song, which is such an essential part of the Australian soundscape, and for its tendency to swoop at people during its springtime nesting season. Reaserch indicates that the Australian Magpie is declining in some regions, while increasing in others. In the East Coast region, reporting rates for this species have declined significantly since 1998

Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike

In flight, the Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike appears rather lazy, as it gives a few flaps of its wings, then glides with them by its side for a second or two; during this glide, the bird loses elevation until it flaps again, giving the flight is characteristic undulating pattern. Black-faced Cuckoo-shrikes sometimes form mobile flocks of dozens of birds, each flying in this manner but not synchronised with the other birds. Foraging Black-faced Cuckoo-shrikes may hover in the wind, plucking invertebrates from the foliage of trees and shrubs without alighting.

Black-shouldered Kite

Common throughout much of mainland Australia, the Black-shouldered Kite is also occasionally recorded in northern Tasmania and on islands in Bass Strait. They usually inhabit grasslands and other open habitats, and with the expansion and establishment of agriculture in many regions, forested areas have been cleared, providing additional habitat, as well as extra food, in the form of House Mice, which forms a major part of the species’ diet. occasionally, grasshoppers.

Brown Falcon

The Brown Falcon is one of the most widespread birds in Australia — there is almost nowhere they cannot be seen, at least occasionally. They are most commonly seen perched on power poles, or hovering or flying back and forth over open habitats, especially grasslands and low shrublands, where they search for prey. They are opportunistic raptors, catching and eating mammals and birds, snakes and insects, with introduced rabbits are their most common prey in many places, especially in summer.

Brown Goshawk

With a flight characterised by frantic flapping interspersed with short glides, Brown Goshawks can be seen over most of Australia. They mostly hunt birds, but also take small mammals, reptiles and insects. Among various hunting methods, their preferred method is to suddenly burst from a concealed perch, surprising unsuspecting prey. Goshawks may spend considerable time perched among the foliage; initially small birds give vigorous alarm calls, but eventually the commotion dies down as they forget about the goshawk. Then the raptor is able to pounce on any unwary bird.

Caspian Tern

Australia’s largest tern, the Caspian Tern is easily identified by its large, bright-red, dagger-like bill. They forage by plunge-diving into the water from heights of up to 15 metres, grabbing a fish with that massive beak. Caspian Terns are able to take larger fish than any other Australian tern. They are widespread around virtually the entire Australian coastline, and also occur inland along major rivers, especially in the Murray–Darling and Lake Eyre drainage basins, preferring wetlands with clear water so they can detect their prey.

Common Blackbird

In Australia, the Common Blackbird is often viewed as a pest, but the early pioneers were determined to ensure that Blackbirds were successfully introduced into their adopted land. Blackbirds were released dozens of times throughout south-eastern Australia, mostly in the 1860s. Though most Blackbirds are sedentary in Australia, their range has expanded and they are capable of making long-distance movements, with some regularly crossing Bass Strait; a few have even reached subantarctic islands!

Common Bronzewing

The Common Bronzewing is most often seen while it is feeding as it walks along bush tracks or quiet country roads, pecking at fallen seeds on the ground. Although seeds from wattle trees are its favoured fare, bronzewings will also eat the seeds of many other trees and shrubs. When they are flushed from the ground, their wings make a loud clattering or clapping sound as they take off, and their flight is strong, swift and direct, before they land in a tree nearby.

Common Myna

One of the most readily recognised birds in urban areas of eastern Australia, the Common Myna is also increasingly familiar to country folk as well. Introduced from Asia to combat agricultural pests, mynas were slow to expand their range initially, but they eventually spread into rural areas, where they have thrived in paddocks and along roadsides. These days their numbers are so large that the chorus of raucous calling by thousands of birds at favoured roosting sites can be deafening, and heard from hundreds of metres away.

Common Starling

The common starling has about a dozen subspecies breeding in open habitats and it has been introduced to Australia,.

Large flocks typical of this species can be beneficial to agriculture by controlling invertebrate pests; however, starlings can also be pests themselves when they feed on fruit and sprouting crops. Common starlings may also be a nuisance through the noise and mess caused by their large urban roosts.

Crested Pigeon

The crested pigeon (Ocyphaps lophotes) is a bird found widely throughout mainland Australia except for the far northern tropical areas. Only two Australian pigeon species possess an erect crest, the crested pigeon and the spinifex pigeon. The crested pigeon is the larger of the two species. The crested pigeon is sometimes referred to as a topknot pigeon,

Eastern Rosella

The plumage of the Eastern Rosella is especially vividly coloured — red and yellow and blue and green and black. Despite this bold coloration, when rosellas are feeding on the ground among the grass or perched among the foliage in the treetops they can be very difficult to see, often seeming to disappear completely into the background. Despite their bright colours, their plumage is patterned so that it creates an extremely effective camouflage which assists the birds in avoiding detection by potential predators.

Eurasian Skylark

Being a non-descript brown bird, the outstanding feature of the Eurasian Skylark is its well-known song. The subject of emotional outpourings by British poets for centuries, the Skylark’s song provides a pleasant background to many open grasslands, pastures and crops in south-eastern Australia. That is exactly the effect that people in the 19th century hoped to achieve when they released Skylarks into the Australian countryside by the hundred. Once considered to be the supreme songster, the songs of many native grassland birds are now generally recognised as being superior.

Galah

Galahs were once confined to the open plains that occur beyond the inland slopes of the Great Divide in eastern Australia, north of the Flinders Ranges in South Australia, and north of the Mulga–Eucalypt line in Western Australia. However, following the clearing of subcoastal woodlands for farming, Galahs began to flood in, taking advantage of the new habitat and its abundant supply of food. They even spread to the coasts, where they are now a familiar sight in the cities.

Gray Butcherbird

With its lovely, lilting song, the Grey Butcherbird may not seem to be a particularly intimidating species. However, with its strong, hooked beak and its fierce stare, the Grey Butcherbird is not a bird to be messed with. When a nest or newly fledged chick is around, if you venture too close, a butcherbird will swoop by flying straight at your face, sometimes striking with enough force to draw blood, and each swoop is accompanied by a loud, maniacal cackle.

Gray Currawong

The Grey Currawong is known by at least 29 different colloquial names, reflecting the varied nature of the species: it has six different subspecies throughout its range in southern Australia. This variation stems mostly from the tone of the grey colouration of their plumage (varying from light grey to sooty black) and the amount of white feathering in their wings (which ranges from none to prominent white patches). To confuse matters further, some subspecies may interbreed with one another, and they may also associate with Pied or Black Currawongs.

Latham’s Snipe

Even when you know exactly where they are hiding in the grass, Latham's Snipe are remarkably difficult to see. So well camouflaged, they blend into the background until, with a loud krek!, they suddenly burst from their hiding place, only to land somewhere nearby where they become instantly invisible again. They are much easier to see on their breeding grounds in Japan, thanks to their elaborate courtship displays. At the nest, though, incubating birds are superbly camouflaged, just as they are in Australia.

Little Corella

Little Corellas often indulge in an activity that is uncommon in the bird world — they like to play. Sometimes they slide down the steep roofs of wheat silos, falling off the edge and then flying back to the top to slide down again. They have also been seen perched on the blades of windmills, spinning round and around, falling off and then regaining a precarious grip on the blades. Even when perched, Little Corellas often hang upside down, or dangle below the perch, holding on with its bill.

Little Raven

Australian crows and ravens are challenging to identify; concentrate on call, throat-hackles, behaviour, and location. Calls usually fairly fast and lack the drawn-out wail typical of Australian Raven. Long throat hackles lend it a slightly bearded appearance. Often flicks wings when calling. Inhabits a broad area of south-eastern Australia. The default crow/raven in Adelaide and Melbourne and forms very large flocks in high-elevation areas like the Australian Alps.

Little Wattlebird

The range of the Little Wattlebird is said to have been shaped by fashion. Before the 1970s, Australian suburban gardens were dominated by exotic trees, shrubs and flowers, providing little food for native birds. In the 1970s, the elms, rhododendrons, roses and gladioli had gone out of fashion, and were replaced by native trees and shrubs which provided bounteous nectar-laden flowers, and shelter among spiky foliage. This coincided with the invasion by Little Wattlebirds into the suburbs of various cities, where they have remained and flourished.

Long-billed Corella

There were once two subspecies of the Long-billed Corella — one lived in western Victoria and the other in south-western Australia. Then, in 1994, suddenly there were no Long-billed Corellas in Western Australia. This was not a conservation issue, but a taxonomic one. With the stroke of a pen (and after years of scientific research) it was decided that the two subspecies differed sufficiently and were, in fact, two separate species. Thus the Long-billed Corella in Western Australia was renamed the Western Corella, a species in its own right.

Magpie-Lark

Magpie-larks are often seen in parks, gardens and streetscapes in built-up areas, but it is equally common in farmland and open areas of the bush. Its familiar call, sometimes rendered as peewee or peewit, has led to those renditions being used as colloquial names for the species, though in South Australia it is known as the ‘Murray Magpie’. It is often confiding in urban areas, but less so elsewhere. Magpie-larks build robust nests made from mud and rootlets, which male birds sometimes defend surprisingly vigorously.

Masking Lapwing

The Masked Lapwing is sometimes referred to as the Spur-winged Plover because each of its wings is armed with a yellow spur at the ‘elbow’ (or carpal joint) — Indigenous people used to say that the birds were carrying yellow spears. Lapwings use these spurs when diving at potential predators or intruders during breeding season, while chicks are running around or when the eggs are just about to hatch. While these attacks are quite unnerving, the birds seldom actually strike their ‘victims’, preferring a close approach to scare them away.

New Holland Honeyeater

The New Holland Honeyeater is one of Australia’s most energetic birds. Fuelled up on high-energy nectar taken from the flowers of banksias, eucalypts, grevilleas and other trees and shrubs, they are always active and pugnacious. Whether they are dashing in pursuit of a flying insect or chasing other honeyeaters away, the New Holland Honeyeater is seldom seen sitting still. One of their more unusual activities is to conduct ‘Corroborrees’, where up to a dozen birds congregate and noisily display together, fluttering their wings.

Noisy Miner

Noisy Miners are particularly pugnacious honeyeaters. They noisily defend their ‘patch’ of trees from other birds, especially other species of honeyeaters which may be seen as competitors for the food resources, and these are vigorously chased away. Many other small birds are also driven from the area, and sometimes miners will even chase after cormorants or herons that may fly past, or harass them mercilessly if they perch somewhere in the miners’ territory. Because of this aggressive behaviour, areas inhabited by Noisy Miners often support few other birds.

Pacific Gull

Australia’s largest gull, the Pacific Gull occurs only along the coasts of southern Australia. Despite its name, the species is seldom seen on the Pacific coastline, and is far more common on the beaches bordering the Southern and Indian Oceans. They breed in colonies on islands, extending from the Furneaux Group in eastern Bass Strait, west to Shark Bay. Their nests may consist of either a scrape in the ground, sometimes lined with gravel, or a neat nest made from grass, sticks and seaweed.

Pied Currawong

Once a regular winter visitor to lowland areas, Pied Currawongs are increasingly remaining at lower elevations areas throughout the year. Assisted by extra of food in the form of scraps and the berries of exotic plants, they have become permanent guests in the lowlands. The converse is also true: Pied Currawongs are also a year-round fixture at many alpine ski resorts. In the winter, when they should be elsewhere, currawongs can be seen hopping about in the snow, scavenging scraps.

Rainbow Lorikeet

The Rainbow Lorikeet is unmistakable with its bright red beak and colourful plumage. Both sexes look alike, with a blue (mauve) head and belly, green wings, tail and back, and an orange/yellow breast. They are often seen in loud and fast-moving flocks, or in communal roosts at dusk..

Rainbow Lorikeets are such colourful parrots that it is hard to mistake them for other species. The related Scaly-breasted Lorikeet is similar in size and shape, but can be distinguished by its all-green head and body.

Red Wattlebird

Large, gray-brown, streaked honeyeater with small pink flaps of facial skin (wattles) and a bright yellow lower belly. Adult has black crown, red eye with white patch below, yellow belly, and streaking across neck, back, and breast. Juvenile is a more uniformly brown, with less defined facial wattles. This species is found in a wide variety of habitats across southern mainland Australia. It can be quite aggressive and typically chases smaller species away from flowering trees. Has a wide variety of loud, harsh vocalizations, many of which are familiar noises across southern Australia.

Silver Gull

There weren’t always as many Silver Gulls as there are now.

Since the 1950s, society has become increasingly wasteful, with our rubbish tips now bulging at the seams. With this increased availability of food in the form of refuse, the population of Silver Gulls has exploded, and offshore islands which once supported small breeding colonies are now over-run.

With so many gulls dominating these breeding islands, it is becoming increasingly difficult for terns and other seabirds to breed there.

Spotted Dove

The Spotted Dove builds its nest from a few fine twigs. It is so frail that the eggs are often visible from below, and they often fall out. Being so precarious, it seems the eggs must seldom hatch successfully and nestlings seldom survive to fledge, but this is not so. Since they were introduced into Australia in the 1860s, Spotted Doves have been very successful, expanding their range greatly to occur right along the east coast, as well as in parts of South Australia and Western Australia.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse