The male has been around most of winter, maybe because it was warmer than usual: mostly, the rufous whistler will make off up north in the autumn and return in the spring.
He’s a handsome bird, a stocky, well-built fellow with a largish head, a white throat, a black hood and collar and a prominent buff-coloured breast. He has a short, stubby beak and eats mainly insects.
His back is slate grey, but the contrasting colours on his breast and neck mean he’s easy to make out when he’s perched in the elm outside the kitchen window.
He has quite a long tail — almost as long as the rest of him — quite narrow with a forked tip at the end. The female is generally a subdued brown or grey with a streaked underbody. She seems uninterested in the male at the moment, which spurs him on to even greater musical endeavours.
His range of calls is rich and varied — The Boss reckons he’s one of the finest Australian songsters — which makes up for the lack of shrike thrushes around here lately: there haven’t been as many along the river since the flood last year, and we’re not sure why that would be.
They are actually from the same mob — the whistlers, shrike-tits and shrike-thrushes are all part of the Pachycephalidae family, known generally for their singing prowess.
The rufous whistler’s song carries well along the river. Sometimes he seems to go all day, although loud sounds often trigger him into action – a gas gun across the river, say, or the passing train whistle. In some parts of the country, they are known as “the thunderbird” because a crack from a lightning strike or a sharp clap of thunder will set the rufous whistler a-singing, too.
We’ve had them nesting in the garden before, so The Boss hopes to see the female working up her small, cup-shaped nest out of spider webs again. She seems to regard that as her job and shoos the male away.
Either way, we’re looking forward to a summer of song. Woof!
14°C