Family PARDALOTIDAE Strickland, 1842

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• Pardalotidae Strickland, 1842.

Introduction

An Australian endemic group of small insectivorous birds that occupy canopies of a wide range of habitats across the continent, varying from the wet coastal forests to the dry and arid interior. It is a monophyletic group with four species represented by 12 ultrataxa. All are arboreal foliage gleaners, hang gleaners, or probers for lerps and other insects.

Gregarious by nature they occur in small flocks or as solitary birds and in pairs. Many appear to be sedentary but are migratory, their local presence being usurped by other migrants arriving to replace them. Southern populations, especially those from Tasmania, flock on migration and are often found in these large feeding assemblages during their winter peregrinations into northern regions. After breeding is concluded, family groups often join other similar family groups in nomadic wanderings.

Nesting is unusual for these canopy-frequenting species. They excavate small tunnels, barely the diameter of their body, to a depth of 40-50 cm. Such nests are generally placed in creek or riverbanks although newly excavated garden trenches or similar earthworks are often chosen. Other nest sites include small tree cavities or occasionally cavities in man made structures. The nest, placed at the extreme end of the tunnel is an untidy affair of bark strips and vine tendrils, lined with finer vegetable material and feathers. Egg clutches number between three and five. The eggs are white and are unmarked, but occasionally nest stained.

Diagnosis

'Unlike acanthizids, pardalotes have well-ossified narial apertures, constricted palates with attenuately subulate transpalatine processes, deeply bifid vomers with developed, round-tipped horns, vestigial maxillo-palatine processes, ossified and thickened hinges of the pterygoids with the medio-palatine processes, temporal fossae nearly occluded by thickened zygomatic processes, near vestigial postorbital processes, and undeveloped alae tympanicae. The twin furrows of the acanthizid-type humeral fossa, moreover, are particularly deep in pardalotes, verging on the double condition found in Eurasian passeroids.'

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.

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