Robin

BIRD: linking the biodiversity community

Category: Birds

The family Petroicidae includes about 45 species of small bird in 15 genera. All are endemic to Australasia or nearby areas. For want of a more accurate common name, the family is often described as the Australasian robins: it extends beyond Australasia, however, and includes not just robins but the Jacky Winter, the New Zealand Tomtit, the scrub-robins, and three birds known as flycatchers.

Most species have a stocky build with a large, rounded head, a short, straight bill, and rounded wingtips. They occupy a wide range of wooded habitats, from subalpine to tropical rainforest, and mangrove swamps to semi-arid scrubland. All are primarily insectivorous, although a few supplement their diet with seeds. Hunting is mostly by perch and pounce, a favoured tactic being to cling sideways onto a treetrunk and scan the ground below without moving.

Social organisation is usually centered on long term pair-bonds and small family groups. Some genera practice cooperative breeding, with all family members helping defend a territory and feed nestlings.

Nests are cup-shaped, usually constructed by the female, and often placed in a vertical fork of a tree or shrub; many species are expert at adding moss, bark or lichen to the outside of the nest as camouflague, making it very difficult to spot (even when it is in a seemingly prominent location).

The relationship of the Petroicidae to other bird families is uncertain. They are clearly part of a particularly old lineage, and not related to the European robins they were named for, nor the North and South American robins, which are actually thrushes (relatives of the introduced Common Blackbird).

Sibley and Alquist's groundbreaking DNA-DNA hybridisation studies suggested that the Australasian robins were most closely allied with the superfamily Corvoidea (a huge group that includes the shrikes, crows and jays, butcherbirds, woodswallows, drongos, cuckoo-shrikes, fantails, monarch flycatchers and many others). More recent protein allozyme studies, on the other hand, suggest that they be placed with the Meliphagoidea — the superfamily that includes the honeyeaters, wrens, pardalotes, and thornbills and itself derives from the great Australasian corvid radiation.

Although the details remain uncertain, the overall picture is clear: despite the striking similarity between the robins of Australasia and the true robins of Europe, their genetic relationship is quite distant, and the Petroicidae are more closely related to the crow family than to the group of northern hemisphere birds which resemble them in appearance, diet, habits, and even coloration.

None of the 21 Australian species are in any immediate danger of extinction, but several are of longer-term concern. The Northern Territory population of the uncommon Northern Scrub-robin is believed extinct; the White-breasted Robin of south-western Australia and the Grey-headed Robin of northern Queensland have restricted ranges which are threatened by ongoing commercial and agricultural development; and nearly all others face continuing pressure from habitat destruction.

Overseas, the picture is much less rosy. There are 18 species endemic to New Guinea, many of them rare, and all of them threatened by logging and unrestrained population growth. In New Zealand, the Black Robin of the Chatham Island group came within a whisker of extinction because of introduced rats: by 1979 the entire world population was four males and one female. After an intensive program involving translocation to a rat-free, newly revegetated island, supplemental feeding, protection of nests from feral European Starlings, and finally cross-fostering with the related New Zealand Tomtit, the population began to recover. By 1999 the Black Robin was established on two islands and the population stood at 259.

• ORDER PASSERIFORMES
  • Family Petroicidae
  • Jacky Winter, Microeca fascinans
  • Lemon-bellied Flycatcher, Microeca flavigaster
  • Yellow-legged Flycatcher, Microeca griseoceps
  • Scarlet Robin, Petroica multicolor
  • New Zealand Tomtit, Petroica macrocephala
  • Red-capped Robin, Petroica goodenovii
  • Flame Robin, Petroica phoenicea
  • Rose Robin, Petroica rosea
  • Pink Robin, Petroica rodinogaster
  • New Zealand Robin, Petroica australis
  • Black Robin (Chatham Island Robin), Petroica traversi
  • Hooded Robin, Melanodryas cicullata
  • Dusky Robin, Melanodryas vittata
  • Pale-yellow Robin, Tregellasia capito
  • White-faced Robin, Tregellasia leucops
  • Eastern Yellow Robin, Eopsaltria australis
  • Western Yellow Robin, Eopsaltria griseogularis
  • White-breasted Robin, Eopsaltria georgiana
  • Mangrove Robin, Eopsaltria pulverulenta
  • White-browed Robin, Poecilodryas superciliosa
  • Buff-sided Robin, Poecilodryas cerviniventris
  • Grey-headed Robin, Heteromyias albispecularis
  • Northern Scrub-Robin, Drymodes superciliaris
  • Southern Scrub-Robin, Drymodes brunnoepygia
• Family Pardalotidae: pardalotes, thornbills, and allies
• Family Meliphagidae: honeyeaters and chats
• Family Maluridae: fairy-wrens, emu-wrens and grasswrens
• (Many other passerine families not listed here)