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Restless Flycatcher | Myiagra inquieta
Grote witkeelmonarch | Monarca inquieto
The Restless Flycatcher is the most conspicuous of the Australian monarch flycatchers and the only one that can hold station in mid-air. Over a clearing in the woodland it hovers in one spot, tail hanging, wings shivering, and while doing so produces a rasping, mechanical sound that earned it the Australian nickname Scissors Grinder. Glossy blue-black above and pure white from chin to vent, it is a bird you hear before you see it.
Voice
The hallmark is a drawn-out, grinding zzzzt-zzzzt-zzzzt, a dry rattle like a knife on a whetstone, delivered almost always while hovering and carrying for hundreds of metres. Alongside it come a clear, short tuwhit contact note and a series of sharp whistles. The grinding hover-call is unique within the genus: no other Australian Myiagra makes anything like it, and once known it identifies the bird by ear alone.
No freely licensed recording has been found for this species yet; what to listen for is described below.
Identification
A slim flycatcher of about twenty centimetres, a good deal of which is tail. Upperparts, crown and side of the head are glossy blue-black; the entire underside, chin and throat included, is pure white, without any rufous or yellow wash. The crown carries a short pointed crest raised in excitement. Male and female look much alike, which is unusual in the genus: in most Myiagra the female has an orange throat. The bird is rarely still, flicks its tail, and returns again and again to the same lookout perch.
Confusion species
The hardest is Paperbark Flycatcher (Myiagra nana), until recently treated as a subspecies of this bird and barely separable on plumage: it is smaller, clearly shorter-tailed and has an almost absent crest, and it lives in tropical northern Australia where Restless Flycatcher is largely absent — in practice range does most of the work. Shining Flycatcher (Myiagra alecto) has an entirely black male, throat and belly included, and so lacks the white character altogether. In Satin Flycatcher (Myiagra cyanoleuca) and Leaden Flycatcher (Myiagra rubecula) the dark of head and breast runs down into a bib, so the throat is never white, and their females have an orange throat besides. Willie Wagtail (Rhipidura leucophrys) is also black and white but has a black throat with a white brow, and swings its tail sideways instead of hovering.
Habitat
Open eucalypt forest and woodland with a short grassy floor, tree lines along creeks and rivers, and scattered trees in farmland. The species needs room to hover and hunts above the vegetation and ground rather than within it: insects are plucked from grass, bark and foliage while hovering, or taken in flight. Orchards, parks and large gardens with old trees are used as well, provided there is open ground beneath.
Where the bird is most often found, arranged by main group and formation.
Range and movements
Eastern and southern Australia, from north-eastern Queensland to the Eyre Peninsula, with a separate area in south-western Australia between Joondalup and Esperance. It is absent from the tropical top of the continent, where Paperbark Flycatcher replaces it, and from the interior deserts. Most birds stay put year-round; in the cooler south some move northwards in winter without amounting to true migration.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
Where and when to look
Watch over open ground beneath scattered trees and listen for the scissors-grinding sound: it gives the bird away before the eye finds it. Then look up for a hovering black-and-white bird with a hanging tail, a posture no other Australian songbird of this size adopts. Check the white of the throat — if the dark of the head continues onto the breast, you have a Satin or Leaden Flycatcher.
Conservation
Least Concern (LC) globally, but in south-eastern Australia the species counts among the woodland birds that are visibly losing ground. The cause is the same as for the other declining woodland species: the loss of old trees in farmed landscapes, the disappearance of dead wood, and the thickening or the outright loss of the open grassy floor over which the bird hunts. Several southern states record the decline in regional reporting; the total range, however, remains large enough to keep the global status at Least Concern.
Scientific name
Myiagra inquieta | (Latham, 1801)
John Latham described the bird in 1801 as Turdus inquietus, from material out of New South Wales. The genus Myiagra was introduced in 1827 by Nicholas Vigors and Thomas Horsfield and is built from Ancient Greek muia ('fly') and agra ('catching, hunting'), literally 'flycatcher'. The epithet inquieta is Latin for 'restless' and refers to the bird's ceaseless movement — the same trait chosen by the English name Restless Flycatcher and the Spanish monarca inquieto. The Dutch Grote witkeelmonarch sets the species against its smaller northern twin.