This post parallels my recent Extended Honeyeater family essay and is prompted by the same holiday experiences: visiting Canberra and Victoria before Christmas I saw birds which don’t live around Townsville and wanted to fit them in to my existing knowledge.
It turned out that the birds I was curious about are not all members of the same taxonomic family but all belong to three families within the superfamily Corvoidea, i.e.,
- Corvidae: crows, ravens (and jays, which don’t occur in Australia)
- Artamidae: woodswallows, butcherbirds, currawongs and Australian magpie
- Corcoracidae: white-winged chough and apostlebird