Voice
Varied. Clear, musical notes 'chip-wheeoo', 'chip-weik-weeoo' and 'chowk, chowk-ik', to loud, raucous, unpleasent sounds and puttural croaking noises. A common sequence is paraphrased, 'rackety crook-shank'.
Nest
Cup-shaped, composed of grass, rootlets and strips of bark, bound with cobweb and lined with fine dry grass, usually placed near the end of a drooping branch of a tree, sometimes overhanging water, up to 10 m or more above the ground.
Eggs (Guide)
2 or 3, occasionally 4; pale pink to grey-pink, well marked with lines, blotches and spots of red-brown, slate or purple-grey, at times forming a zone at the larger end; oval to tapered-oval; about 28 x 20 mm. Incubation: about 13 days; probably by female.
Nominate subspecies intergrades with sordidus in Queensland (from near Cape York south to around Georgetown). Additional proposed subspecies in Australia are occidentalis (described from Derby, in northern Western Australia), breda (from Melville I), johnstoni (from Johnston R, in northern Queensland) and carpentariae (from Normanton, in north-western Queensland), but all of these represent only minor and clinal variation in size and tone of plumage.
The following 3 subspecies are recognised:
citreogularis (Gould, 1837) - Queensland (from Cape York Peninsula and east of Diamantina Drainage Basin) to New South Wales (largely absent east of Great Divide in south-east), northern Victoria and extreme central-eastern South Australia (along Murray R).
sordidus (Gould, 1848) - Northern western Australia (mainly north of 19° south, including many offshore islands) east through Top End of northern Territory (including Melville I, Groote Eylandt and Sir Edward Pellew Is) to north-western Queensland (south to Selwyn Range).
papuensis Mayr and Rand, 1935 - Central-southern New Guinea (Merauke east to Oriomo R).
The Field Guide to the Birds of Australia Pizzey, G., and Knight, E., 1997, Angus & Robertson, Sydney ISBN 0 207 19691 5
Field Guide to Australian Birds Morecombe, M., 2000, Steve Parish Publishing Pty Ltd. ISBN 1 876282 10 X
Field Guide to the Birds of Australia Simpson, K., and Day, N., 1999, 6th Edition, Viking ISBN 0 670 87918 5
Reader's Digest Complete Book of Australian Birds 1988, 2nd Edition, Reader's Digest ISBN 0 949819 99 9
What Bird is That? 1984, Revised Edition, Angus & Robertson, Sydney ISBN 0 207 14846 5
Handbook of Australian, New Zealand & Antarctic Birds 1990 - , Oxford University Press, Melbourne ISBN 0 19 553244 9
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BirdLife International Species Factsheet