The western yellow robin is a species of bird in the Australasian robin family, Petroicidae, native to Australia. It has grey upperparts, and a grey breast and head, broken by whitish streaks near the bill and below the eye, with a conspicuous yellow belly. Two subspecies are recognized: subspecies griseogularis, which has a yellow rump, and subspecies rosinae with an olive-green rump.
About Western yellow robin in brief
The western yellow robin is a species of bird in the Australasian robin family, Petroicidae, native to Australia. It has grey upperparts, and a grey breast and head, broken by whitish streaks near the bill and below the eye, with a conspicuous yellow belly. Two subspecies are recognized: subspecies griseogularis, which has a yellow rump, and subspecies rosinae with an olive-green rump. The species inhabits open eucalypt jungle, woodland, and scrub, generally favouring habitats with significant understory. Its range comprises the Southwest of Western Australia and the state’s southern coastline, as well as the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia. Predominantly insectivorous, it pounces on prey from a low branch or forages on the ground. Although it is rated as least concern on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species, it has declined in parts of its range. In 1979, Western Australian ornithologist Julian Ford proposed treatment of the western and eastern yellow robins as a single species on account of similarities in calls, ecology, and behavior. Bird taxonomist Richard Schodde did not feel that this finding warranted the lumping of the two species and concluded in 1999 that they formed a superspecies.
The male and female are similar in size and color, with no seasonal variation in plumage. The lores are blacker, there are some faint paler eyebrows, and there is some faint fading into a white breast into a fading grey breast. The upper parts of the bird are grey with a white throat into a faint white breast, with some faint lores on the paler side of the head. It is not closely related to either the European robin or the American robin, but rather belongs to the family Petroicaceae. The earliest recorded name is b’am-boore—reported by English naturalist John Gilbert Gilbert in 1840, and published in Gould’s Birds of Australia. The’shrike-‘ prefix was dropped by the RoyalAustralasian Ornithologists Union in 1926. The specific name is derived from the Medieval Latin words griseus, meaning ‘grey’, and gula meaning ‘throat’, and is the official name given to this species by the International Ornithologist’ Union. It ranges between 13. 5 and 15. 5 cm long, with wingspan of 5–27 cm.
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This page is based on the article Western yellow robin published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 10, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
