White-winged fairywren

The white-winged fairywren is a species of passerine bird in the Australasian wren family, Maluridae. It lives in the drier parts of Central Australia; from central Queensland and South Australia across to Western Australia. It is a cooperative breeding species, and small groups of birds maintain and defend territories year-round.

About White-winged fairywren in brief

The white-winged fairywren is a species of passerine bird in the Australasian wren family, Maluridae. It lives in the drier parts of Central Australia; from central Queensland and South Australia across to Western Australia. The female is sandy-brown with light-blue tail feathers; it is smaller than the male, which, in breeding plumage, has a bright-blue body, black bill, and white wings. It is a cooperative breeding species, and small groups of birds maintain and defend territories year-round. As part of a courtship display, the male wren plucks petals from flowers and displays them to female birds. The back region between the shoulders is in fact bare, with feathers that arise from the shoulder region and sweep inwards in different patterns. This variation confused the early naturalists who described the white-backed and blue-backed species. It was previously classified as a member of the Old World flycatcher family, Musicapidae, and later as the warbler family, warbleriidae. More recently, DNA analysis has shown it to be related to the Meliphagidae and Pardalotidae. The white-idea is one of eleven species in the genus Theagoidea in the Maluraceae family, with the next closest relative being the New Guinea fairy-shouldered fairy-wren, which makes up the next most distant relative of the Australian wren, the red-backed fairy-Wren. The species was first collected by French naturalists Jean René Constant Quoy and Joseph Paul Gaimard in September 1818, on Louis de Freycinet’s voyage around the Southern Hemisphere.

A specimen was subsequently lost in a shipwreck, but a painting entitled Mérion leucoptère by Jacques Arago survived and led to the bird’s description in 1824 by French ornithologist Charles Dumont de Sainte-Croix. The original specimen was of the black-plumaged subspecies from Dirk Hartog Island, which was not recorded again for 80 years. Meanwhile, the widespread blue- plumagedsubspecies was discovered and described as two separate species by John Gould in 1865. The name for the species was derived from the Ancient Greek leuko- \”white\” and pteron \”wing\”. It is not yet confirmed genetically, but it may be promiscuous and assist in raising the young from other pairings. It occurs in heathland and arid scrubland, where low shrubs provide cover. It mainly eats insects, supplementing this with small fruits and leaf buds, and occurs in the northern parts of the state of Victoria and the southern parts of South Australia and the northern part of the South West of Australia. Apart from the mainland subspecies, one is found on Dirk Hartogs Island, and another on Barrow Island off the coast of Western Australia, Males from these islands have black rather than blue breeding plumages.

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