Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike

About the Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike

The black-faced cuckooshrike (Coracina novaehollandiae) is a common omnivorous passerine bird native to Australia and southern New Guinea. It has a protected status in New South Wales, under the National Parks and Wildlife Act, 1974.

They are widely distributed in almost any wooded habitat throughout the region, except in rainforests. But they can also occur in urban areas, and are a fairly common sight on power lines in Australian cities such as Sydney and Perth.

The black-faced cuckooshrike was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the thrushes in the genus Turdus and coined the binomial name Turdus novaehollandiae. Gmelin based his description on the "New Holland thrush" that had been described in 1783 by the English ornithologist John Latham in his book A General Synopsis of Birds. Lathan had examined a specimen in the collection of the naturalist Joseph Banks that had come from Adventure Bay in southern Tasmania. Adventure Bay had been visited by Captain James Cook in January 1777 on his third voyage to the Pacific Ocean. A painting of the... Wikipedia →