Rainbow pitta

The rainbow pitta is a small passerine bird in the pitta family, Pittidae, endemic to northern Australia. It has a velvet black head with chestnut stripes above the eyes, olive green upper parts, black underparts, a bright red belly and an olive green tail. Although the species has a small global range, it is locally common and the International Union for Conservation of Nature has assessed it as being of least concern.

About Rainbow pitta in brief

The rainbow pitta is a small passerine bird in the pitta family, Pittidae, endemic to northern Australia. It has a velvet black head with chestnut stripes above the eyes, olive green upper parts, black underparts, a bright red belly and an olive green tail. It lives in the monsoon forests and in some drier eucalypt forests. Although the species has a small global range, it is locally common and the International Union for Conservation of Nature has assessed it as being of least concern. The species was once treated as a subspecies of the noisy pitta of eastern Australia, and was also treated as being in a species complex with that species, the elegant pitta and the black-faced pitta. In 1999 the Western Australian population was split into the subspecies P. i. johnstoneiana by Richard Schodde and Ian J. Mason. It is the only species of pitta endemic to Australia and is found in the Northern Territory and Western Australia, from sea-level to the Top End, from east to the Arnhem Peninsula. In Western Australia it is restricted to the coastal Kimberley, Walcott Inlet and Middle Osborn Island, and also found on the islands of Bonaparte, Groote Eyland and Eyland Islands. Like other pittas, the rainbow is a secretive and shy bird. Its diet is mainly insects, arthropods and small vertebrates.

Pairs defend territories and breed during the rainy season, as that time of year provides the most food for nestlings. The female lays three to five blotched eggs inside its large domed nest. Both parents defend the nest, incubate the eggs and feed the chicks. The wings are green with a golden sheen and have a shining blue patch on the lesser wing coverts, and the flight feathers and underwing are black. The tail is olive-green with a black base and the uppertail coverts sometimes have a silvery-blue band across them. The plumage is essentially the same for both sexes; females may have slightly more buff-yellow in their flanks and a slightly different shade of red on the lower belly, but these differences do not make the sexes distinguishable by plumage. The specific name iris is taken from the Ancient Greek for ‘rainbow’; this is the origin of the common name as well. It typically stands upright while looking for food or resting, with the legs slightly bent and the body held at a 60–70° angle. It moves around by hopping. The bird is most commonly found in monsoon forest and adjacent vine-scrub forest and bamboo forests, also occurs in eucallypt forest, bamboo forest, paperbark forest and gallery forest.

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