Description
Like other butcherbirds, the Pied Butcherbird is a stockily built bird with a relatively large head and short wings and legs. It ranges from 33 to 38 cm (13–15 in) long, averaging around 35 cm (13.8 in). Its plumage is wholly black and white. Its has a black head, nape and throat, giving it the appearance of a black hood, which is bounded by a broad white collar. The mantle, and much of the tail and wings are black, while the rump, tail tip and outer wing feathers are white. The underparts are white. The eyes are a dark brown, the legs grey and the bill a pale bluish grey tipped with black, with a prominent hook at the end.
The juvenile Pied Butcherbird resembles the Grey Butcherbird, it has a buff upper throat and dark brown instead of black plumage.
The black hood helps distinguish the Pied Butcherbird from the Australian Magpie and much smaller Magpie-lark, the latter of which also has a much smaller beak.
The Pied Butcherbird has been considered the most accomplished songbird in Australia, described as a "magic flute" by one writer, richer and clearer than the Australian Magpie. Song melodies vary across the continent and no single song is sung by the whole population. There is no clear demarcation between simple calls and elaborate songs, and duets are common. The species improvises extensively in creating new and complex melodies. One of its calls has been likened to the opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.
Read more about this topic: Pied Butcherbird
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“A sound mind in a sound body, is a short, but full description of a happy state in this World: he that has these two, has little more to wish for; and he that wants either of them, will be little the better for anything else.”
—John Locke (1632–1704)
“The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a “global village” instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)
“As they are not seen on their way down the streams, it is thought by fishermen that they never return, but waste away and die, clinging to rocks and stumps of trees for an indefinite period; a tragic feature in the scenery of the river bottoms worthy to be remembered with Shakespeare’s description of the sea-floor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)