Family NEOSITTIDAE Ridgway, 1904

Museums

Regional Maps

• Neosittinae Ridgway, R. 1904. The birds of North and Middle America. Bulletin of the United States National Museum 50(3): xx + 801 [439].

  Type genus:

   Neositta Hellmayr, 1901 [Neositta = Daphoenositta].

Introduction

The sittellas as a group are small birds that exhibit highly variable plumage and are endemic to Australia and New Guinea. Three species are recognised in a monotypic genus. Two occur in New Guinea and a single species with five highly divergent subspecies are found in Australia; the family is absent from Tasmania. Sitellas occupy niches similar to the Northern Hemisphere nuthatches (Sittidae); however, any similarity ends with their external appearance — the neosittids are more closely related to the whistlers and shrike-thrushes (Pachycephalidae) (Christidis & Boles 1994).

The Australian taxa are highly mobile and nomadic within their home range. They are gregarious and occur in small flocks that appear highly agitated. They call constantly, moving rapidly, their flight jerky. During such movements they often flick their wings showing to advantage a broad wing stripe of either orange or white. Sittellas are scansorial and arboreal feeders and, while probing, are usually found head down and moving down limbs and branches. The family occupies habitats ranging through forest, woodland and mulga associations.

Sittella nests are often difficult to locate. They are usually constructed in the narrow fork of a tree, usually at some height above ground. The cupped nest is made of cobwebs interwoven with wool, cocoons and hair; these are then camouflaged by decorative material such as lichens and bark fixed externally. A normal clutch is three eggs. The base colour is bluish or greenish, over which the eggs are marked with slate grey or black blotches and spots usually forming a cap at the larger end.

Diagnosis

'All that skeletal data confirm is that sittellas are corvoids, with a single deep trabeculated fossa in the head of the humerus in a general depression not very different from that of pachycephalines. In the structure of the skull, particularly the ectethmoid plate, narial protuberance, simple vomer and long zygomatic processes, sittellas are nevertheless quite different from pachycephalines, however much the differences are constrained by mode of foraging.'

Diagnosis References

Schodde, R. & Mason, I.J. 1999. The Directory of Australian Birds : Passerines. A Taxonomic and Zoogeographic Atlas of the Biodiversity of Birds in Australia and its Territories. Collingwood, Australia : CSIRO Publishing x 851 pp.

General References

Christidis, L. & Boles, W.E. 1994. The Taxonomy and Species of Birds of Australia and its Territories. Monograph 2. Melbourne : Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union iv 112 pp.

History of changes