Photo by Tom Tarrant
- Certhionyx niger
Identification
Male
- Black head, neck, wings and upperparts
- White underbody, apart from a vertical black stripe through centre of chest
- Long slender down-curved bill.
Female
- Brown head and upper body
- Pale eye-stripe
- Freckled grey-brown chest which fades into a white abdomen.
Distribution
Taxonomy
Monotypic.
Habitat
Open woodlands and shrublands of arid and semi-arid regions.
Behaviour
Diet
The diet includes insects and nectar, especially eucalypts, mistletoe and the Emu-bush, Eremophila.
Breeding
The female builds a shallow, open cup-shaped nest from fine twigs, grass, and other plant material bound with spiderweb, lining it with grass, roots, fibre, horse hair, flowers or wool. The female incubates alone, but both sexes feed and care for the young.
