Passerines | Passeriformes

Families in this order

• New Zealand wrens | AcanthisittiThis clade consists of four living species, all four endemic to New Zealand and found nowhere else in the world. They are small, compact birds with a short tail and rounded wings; flight is weak and covers only short distances, and several species in the group have since gone extinct. The nest sits hidden in a cavity, a rock crevice or under tree roots. The voice box differs from that of both the true songbirds and the suboscines, with a simpler structure of its own.
• New Zealand wrens | Acanthisittidae2 species
• Suboscines | TyranniTyrant flycatchers, antbirds, ovenbirds and, in the Old World, broadbills and pittas - almost all of them South American or from the tropics around the Indian Ocean. Their song is fixed in the genes: they do not learn it from neighbours, and their voice box is controlled by fewer muscles than that of the true songbirds.
• Pittas | Pittidae3 species
• True songbirds | PasseriWhat sets this group apart within the order is that the song is not fixed but has to be learned: in its first months a young bird takes its model from adult neighbours, so that one species sounds different from district to district. The voice box carries the full number of muscle pairs for the job; some species produce two notes at once, others take whole passages from the sounds around them. Song serves both to mark out a territory and to win a mate, and many species keep a fixed repertoire of dozens of phrases for it. With over four thousand species the group makes up the greater part of the order; it is found across the whole world and is richest in forms in Australia and its surroundings.
• Crows and allies | CorvidesLarge, heavily built birds by songbird standards, with a powerful and often slightly hooked bill, and a diet of whatever is available: insects and fruit, but also eggs, nestlings and carrion. For their size they have the largest brains of any birds, which shows in their memory for places, the way they handle objects and the ease with which they imitate sounds. They are long-lived, often stay with the same partner for years, and live in family parties in which last year's young help to raise a new brood. The clutch is small and the nest a solid cup high in a tree or shrub. The group is centred on Australasia and the islands north of Australia, and most of its species stay in their area all year.
• Lyrebirds | Menuridae2 speciesThe lyrebird's syrinx, with three pairs of muscles, is the most simply built of any songbird's, and yet out of it comes the most exact mimicry known in birds: the songbird repertoire of the whole forest, down to a flock's alarm and the clatter of wings, run one after another and recognisable species by species. A male sings in winter, for hours, from an earth mound he has raked up with his feet and on which he throws his tail forward over his back. The female builds alone: a domed nest with a side entrance, of sticks and moss, usually low down or on the ground. One egg is laid and incubated for about fifty days, the longest of any songbird, and the young bird then stays with its mother for months. In scratching for food a lyrebird turns the forest floor over; a single bird shifts tonnes of soil and leaf litter in a year.
• Scrubbirds | Atrichornithidae2 species
• Australasian treecreepers | Climacteridae6 species
• Bowerbirds | Ptilonorhynchidae11 speciesThe bower is not a nest. It is a structure of sticks on the ground where mating alone takes place, maintained in the same spot year after year. Two forms occur: an avenue of two upright walls through which the female looks, and a tower of sticks around a sapling. In front of the bower a collection of objects is laid out, each species in its own colour — blue, white, green, or glass and plastic from the human world — and that collection is sorted, guarded and stolen from the neighbours. The Satin Bowerbird paints the inner walls with a paste of chewed plant matter, applied with a wad of bark. The Great Bowerbird graduates its objects by size, small near the entrance and large beyond, which falsifies the perspective seen from the avenue. The female builds the nest, incubates and feeds alone; young males take years to reach adult plumage and practise meanwhile on untidy bowers of their own.
• Fairywrens, grasswrens and emu-wrens | Maluridae27 speciesSmall birds that carry the long tail upright and move by hopping through dense scrub, spinifex or reed; they seldom fly far. The male moults into a brightly coloured dress before the breeding season and loses it again afterwards. They live in groups: a pair with helpers, usually sons of earlier years, which guard the nest and feed the young. At the same time fidelity within the pair is as low in this family as in hardly any other group of birds — most of the young in a nest are fathered by another male, often a neighbour who visits before sunrise. A male carries a petal or a coloured bract in his bill as part of the display. The family also holds the grasswrens of the dry interior and the emu-wrens, whose tail consists of a handful of loose, filamentous shafts that let the light through.
• Bristlebirds | Dasyornithidae3 species
• Pardalotes | Pardalotidae4 species
• Thornbills, scrubwrens, gerygones and allies | Acanthizidae45 species
• Honeyeaters | Meliphagidae78 speciesThe tongue ends in a brush of fine, split tips that fills with nectar as a brush fills with paint; the bird flicks it into a flower and out again up to ten times a second. In this region the family is the largest of all and the most important pollinator: eucalypts, banksias and grevilleas are pollinated almost entirely by birds and not by insects. Besides nectar a great deal of insect matter is taken, and the sugary caps that psyllids leave on eucalypt leaves. Many species carry bare skin around the eye or wattles at the throat, in yellow, red or blue. They are loud and fierce: the miners live in large colonies and drive every other bird out of their trees together, birds of prey included. Because flowering shifts from year to year, most species are nomadic and follow the front of bloom for hundreds of kilometres.
• Logrunners | Orthonychidae2 species
• Australasian babblers | Pomatostomidae4 species
• Quail-thrushes and jewel-babblers | Cinclosomatidae7 species
• Cuckooshrikes | Campephagidae7 species
• Whiteheads | Mohouidae3 species
• Boatbills | Machaerirhynchidae1 species
• Woodswallows, bellmagpies and allies | Artamidae14 speciesTwo very different kinds of bird in one family. The woodswallows have long, pointed wings, soar for hours on thermals and take insects on the wing; they are the only songbirds outside the honeyeaters with a brush-tipped tongue, and at night and in cold weather dozens of them creep into a cluster against a trunk, one over another. The butcherbirds, currawongs and the Australian Magpie are heavily built, with a straight bill hooked at the tip; they feed on the ground, forage walking, and wedge larger prey into a fork or onto a thorn to pull it apart. The song of the Australian Magpie consists of long, flowing sequences performed by a group in turn, two birds interlocking their phrases so tightly that they sound like one bird; that song marks out a territory a group holds for years. In the breeding season a few birds defend that ground against anything that passes.
• Sittellas | Neosittidae1 species
• Whipbirds and wedgebills | Psophodidae4 species
• Australasian bellbirds | Oreoicidae1 species
• Shriketits | Falcunculidae3 species
• Old World orioles | Oriolidae3 species
• Whistlers and allies | Pachycephalidae12 species
• Fantails | Rhipiduridae7 species
• Drongos | Dicruridae1 species
• Monarchs and allies | Monarchidae13 species
• White-winged chough and apostlebird | Corcoracidae2 species
• Birds-of-paradise | Paradisaeidae4 species
• Crows, jays and magpies | Corvidae7 species
• Stitchbird | Notiomystidae1 species
• New Zealand wattlebirds | Callaeidae3 species
• Australasian robins | Petroicidae26 species
• Sparrows and allies | PasseridesSet against the crow group is the other half of the songbirds: mostly small, lightly built birds with a fine bill, taking insects, seeds and nectar from leaf, twig and ground. They lay larger clutches, often raise two or three broods a year, and build an open cup or a closed nest in cover, in a hole or against a wall. In the north most of them leave as soon as the insects run out, and the territory is claimed again with song in spring. Outside Australasia this is by far the most numerous group of songbirds: practically every songbird you see in Europe belongs here.
• Tits, swallows and warblers | SylviidaSmall insect-eaters with a thin, pointed bill, gathering their food from among leaves and twigs or catching it in the air. The plumage is green, grey or brown, with little difference between male and female and often less still between closely related species - this is the group in which a birder gets more from the ear than from the eye. The nest sits deep in vegetation, in a hole, or as a closed ball among the stems, and the clutch is large for a songbird. Many species winter south of the Sahara or in southern Asia, and outside the breeding season they move through scrub and canopy in mixed parties.
• Larks | Alaudidae2 species
• Cisticolas and allies | Cisticolidae2 species
• Reed warblers and allies | Acrocephalidae1 species
• Grasshopper warblers, grassbirds and allies | Locustellidae6 species
• Swallows | Hirundinidae7 species
• Bulbuls | Pycnonotidae1 species
• White-eyes and allies | Zosteropidae4 species
• Thrushes, flycatchers and starlings | MuscicapidaSongbirds that work from a fixed post: sitting upright they watch about them and drop onto whatever moves, or else pick insects off bark, branch and ground. The legs are sturdy, the bill is broad at the base and set with bristles, and the song is loud and musical, with a great many phrases run one after another. The first plumage of the young is spotted or scaled, even in species that are plain as adults. In late summer and winter most of them turn largely to berries and other soft fruit - the reason thrushes shift west en masse in a hard winter.
• Rhabdornis, starlings and mynas | Sturnidae4 species
• Thrushes and allies | Turdidae4 species
• Finches, sparrows and buntings | PasseridaSeed is the staple of the adults here: the bill is either conical or fine and tweezer-like, food is gathered walking or hopping on the ground, and the birds have to drink every day. The young, even so, are fed on insects almost everywhere, including in species whose adults eat nothing but seed. Male and female differ in plumage more often and more strongly than in the other groups, and the song is short and repetitive, delivered from an open perch or in a song flight over open country. Outside the breeding season many species gather in flocks wherever seed lies: stubble fields, rough ground and feeding places by the house.
• Flowerpeckers | Dicaeidae2 species
• Spiderhunters and sunbirds | Nectariniidae1 species
• Munias, parrotfinches, waxbills and allies | Estrildidae19 species
• Accentors | Prunellidae1 species
• Snowfinches and Old World sparrows | Passeridae2 species
• Wagtails and pipits | Motacillidae5 species
• Finches, euphonias and allies | Fringillidae4 species
• Old World buntings | Emberizidae2 species