Eastern Shrike-tit

About the Eastern Shrike-tit

The eastern shriketit (Falcunculus frontatus) is a species of passerine bird in the family Falcunculidae. It is also known as bark tit, crested tit or yellow-bellied tit. It is found in south-eastern Australia from the southeast of South Australia, throughout Victoria, eastern New South Wales to southeastern Queensland, with some scattered occurrences further north and west in Queensland.

The eastern shriketit was first described by the English ornithologist John Latham in 1801 under the binomial name Lanius frontatus. It was named Falcunculus flavigulus by John Gould, which he quickly realised was a frontatus in female plumage.

Three subspecies of the crested shriketit (Falcunculus frontatus) were recognised as distinct species based on their widely disjunct distributions and plumage differences, so that F. frontatus was split from F. whitei and F. leucogaster following Schodde and Mason (1999). In appearance, the eastern shriketit differs from the northern shriketit (F. whitei), which has broad yellow wing-margins and brownish-grey wing coverts, and the western shriketit (F. leucogaster), which has a white belly, olive-grey wing-coverts and yellow-edged remiges.

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