Grey Butcherbird
Cracticus torquatus
Family: Artamidae (Woodswallows, Butcherbirds, Currawongs, 15 species in Australia)
Size: 24-30 cm
Distribution: Approximately the southern half of Australia, most of QLD except the extreme northwest, only the southernmost part of NT.
Status: Common to locally uncommon
Habitat: Open forest, woodland, mallee, urban, farmland
References: Simpson and Day, Reader's Digest
The grey butcherbird is a small bird in the same family as magpies and currawongs. It has a lovely song, which is its most distinctive feature. It is often heard in the lower and mid Blue Mountains. There is also a pied butcherbird which is black and white coloured.
It has a pronounced hook at the end of its beak that can be seen up close.
Photo: Blaxland, Blue Mountains NSW.
Photo: Blaxland, Blue Mountains NSW.
Artwork: John Gould, 'The Birds of Australia', 1848. Original Scanned Image.
Some Birdwatching Resources
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NEW: The Australian Bird Guide, by Peter Menkhorst (Author), Danny Rogers (Author), Rohan Clarke (Author), Jeff Davies (Illustrator), Peter Marsack (Illustrator), Kim Franklin (Illustrator). Revised Edition 2019. Original edition published 2017. This is a newer Australian bird field guide that I just got recently. It may be the best one out of all of them now. Though I still like the pictures better in "Simpson and Day" in terms of their artistic value, and that they just look more interesting to me than the drawings in any other bird field guide I've seen. This one has more "clinical" looking pictures. They are coloured artist-rendered drawings, not photographs. Though the more "clinical" look is meant to be more anatomically accurate, and better for identification.
The rest of the book is wonderful, with different coloured regions on the range maps, and very high quality information overall. It was the winner in its category for an Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) award for book of the year in 2018.
Purchase from Australia (The Nile)
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Purchase from Amazon.com.au (Australian Site)
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