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Forty-spotted Pardalote | Pardalotus quadragintus
Tasmaanse diamantvogel | Pardalote tasmano
The Forty-spotted Pardalote is one of the rarest songbirds in Australia: a small, dull green bird surviving in no more than a handful of colonies in south-eastern Tasmania, with nearly the whole world population on Bruny Island and Maria Island. It lives almost entirely off one tree, the manna gum, and disappears where that tree disappears. It has declined sharply and is listed as endangered.
Voice
A soft double note, harder and drier in tone than the high sweet sleep-sleep of the Spotted Pardalote, and carrying markedly less far. It is the only practical field character at a distance, since the bird itself stays high in the foliage. Pairs keep contact with short muffled notes while working the leaves. Calling is heard mainly in the breeding season, August to December, and at any distance it is easily lost among the calls of the two common pardalotes that hold the same trees.
No freely licensed recording has been found for this species yet; what to listen for is described below.
Identification
Nine to ten centimetres, with the compact build and short bill of all pardalotes. The plumage is dull green to greenish brown on head and back, with an olive rump; the breast is white washed pale yellow, face and undertail olive-yellow. The wings are black with white feather tips that show on the folded wing as a row of separate white dots — closer to sixty than forty in reality, despite the English name. There is no seasonal plumage and the sexes are alike. The overall impression is greener and duller than any other pardalote.
Confusion species
Spotted Pardalote (Pardalotus punctatus) is the hardest and often sits in the same tree: it has a white eyebrow stripe, a spotted black crown and a chestnut rump, all three absent here, and looks far more contrasted above. Striated Pardalote (Pardalotus striatus) has a white eyebrow with a yellow spot at the front and a long white wing stripe instead of separate dots. Anyone who sees a pardalote in Tasmania that looks 'green and dull', without crown spots and without an eyebrow stripe, has almost certainly found this species. Doubt should be reported as doubt: the colonies are counted, and wrong records blur the picture.
Habitat
Dry eucalypt forest and coastal woodland with a high proportion of manna gum, Eucalyptus viminalis, the tree it depends on almost entirely; about eighty per cent of the nestlings' diet comes from it. It takes lerps, small insects and larvae from the foliage and also taps manna, the sugary exudate of the leaves. Nesting is in tree hollows, stumps, fallen trunks and occasionally on the ground, in a domed or cup-shaped nest of fibrous bark and grass built by both parents. Very occasionally it turns up in the suburbs of Hobart.
Where the bird is most often found, arranged by main group and formation.
Range and movements
Endemic to Tasmania, and within it confined to fragmented colonies in the south-east and on Flinders, Bruny and Maria Islands. Ninety-nine per cent of the world population is on Maria and Bruny Islands; the 2009 count found 974 birds on Maria Island and 450 on Bruny Island. The bird is sedentary: pairs hold territories in the breeding season and form small winter parties, but the range is never left. The species has never been recorded outside Tasmania.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
Where and when to look
Bruny Island is the place, with the manna gum stands in the north of the island and around Adventure Bay as the standing addresses; Maria Island works as well. Go in the breeding season, August to December, stand under a group of manna gums and work the foliage systematically with binoculars. Compare every pardalote you see with the two common species that are also there, and watch for the absence of crown spots and eyebrow stripe. Do not use playback and keep away from nest hollows; this is an endangered species whose every colony has been counted.
Conservation
Endangered (EN) on the world list, and listed as endangered federally and in Tasmania as well — one of the rarest songbirds in Australia. The grounds for that status are the very small, highly fragmented range and the tiny breeding area. The decline is steep: where 3,840 birds in 121 colonies were counted between 1991 and 1997, 2009 found 1,486 in 54 colonies, a loss of nearly half of all colonies; over the seventeen years to 2010-2011 a decline of up to sixty per cent was measured. The causes stack up: clearing and fragmentation of manna gum forest, drought and reduced rainfall tied to climate change, bushfires able to remove a whole colony in a night, displacement from nest hollows and food trees by Noisy Miners (Manorina melanocephala) and by Striated Pardalote (Pardalotus striatus), predation by Laughing Kookaburras among others, and parasitic fly larvae of the genus Passeromyia that kill the nestlings. Management turns on planting and protecting manna gum, putting up specially designed nest boxes that exclude the parasitic flies, working with landholders on Bruny Island under the national recovery plan, and limiting fire risk in the core colonies.
Scientific name
Pardalotus quadragintus | Gould, 1838
Gould described the species in 1838 as Pardalotus quadragintus, from material out of Van Diemen's Land, now Tasmania; the genus has never changed, so author and year stand without parentheses. quadragintus derives from Latin quadraginta (forty), after the white spots on the wings, which Gould put at forty — the true number is higher. The English name forty-spotted pardalote comes from the same count. Pardalotus is from Greek pardalotos (spotted like a leopard). The Dutch name points to the island the species is wholly tied to.