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The Birds of Australia, Vol. 2 of 7 cover

The Birds of Australia, Vol. 2 of 7

Chapter 95: MONARCHA CARINATA. Carinated Flycatcher.
By John Gould
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About This Book

A richly illustrated natural-history volume presenting systematic accounts of Australian birds, pairing hand-colored plates with detailed descriptions of plumage, variation, behavior, habitats, distribution, and eggs. Entries cover nightjars, podarguses, swifts, swallows, kingfishers, pardalotes, shrike-thrushes and numerous other passerine and non-passerine groups, noting diagnostic features, synonymy, and range. The text discusses variation within species, field observations, and comparisons to related taxa, and provides locality records and brief natural-history notes to assist identification and study.

MONARCHA CARINATA.
Carinated Flycatcher.

Muscipeta carinata, Swains. Zool. Ill., 1st ser., pl. 147.

Drymophila carinata, Temm. Pl. Col. 418. f. 2.

Monarcha carinata, Vig. and Horsf. in Linn. Trans., vol. xv. p. 255.—Gould in Syn. Birds of Australia, Part II.

This is a migratory bird in New South Wales, arriving in spring and departing before winter. It gives a decided preference to thick brushy forests, such as those at Illawarra and other similar districts extending from the Hunter to Moreton Bay. It is also equally abundant in the thick brushes which clothe the sloping mountains of the interior. During the spring or pairing time it becomes very animated, and is continually flying about and beneath the branches of the trees; it does not capture insects, like the true Flycatchers, on the wing, but obtains them while hopping about from branch to branch, after the manner of the Pachycephalæ. It has a rather loud whistling note, which being often repeated tends considerably to enliven the woods in which it dwells.

I dissected many examples in the bright plumage, all of which proved to be males, yet I could not fully satisfy myself whether the upper bird in the Plate is a female, a young bird, or a distinct species; I believe, however, that it will prove to be the female.

The Monarcha carinata does not inhabit Van Diemen’s Land or South Australia; its great nursery is evidently the south-eastern portion of the country: a distinct but nearly-allied species inhabits the north coast, of which I have specimens in my collection from the neighbourhood of Cape York.

Forehead, lores and throat jet-black; all the upper surface grey; wings and tail brown; sides of the neck and the chest light grey; abdomen and under tail-coverts rufous; bill beautiful light blue-grey, the tip paler than the base; legs bluish lead-colour; irides black; inside of the mouth greyish blue.

In all probability, the females and the young males of the year are destitute of the black mark on the face, and the upper figure is that of a female or a male in the plumage of the first year.

The figures are of the size of life.