Habits
Usually singly or in twos. Sometimes in small family parties.
Food
Arthropods, mainly insects. Rarely seeds.
Voice
A deep, slightly harsh, guttural 'zhirrp', sigly or repeated. Also a strident, far-carrying 'see-hear, see-hear', 'see-kew, see-kew' or 'liprick, liprick'.
Leaden Flycatcher (Myiagra rubecula) [XC264018]
by Dezmond Wells from Bribie island, Australia (call, song)
Leaden Flycatcher (Myiagra rubecula) [XC189100]
by John V. Moore from Seal Rocks, New South Wales, Australia (call)
Nest
Cup-shaped, composed of bark bound with cobweb, lined with fine rootles and decorated with fragments of bark and lichen, usually built on a dead branch immediately below a living, leafy limb, usually 10 - 25 m above the ground.
Eggs (Guide)
3; white or tinged pale blue, spotted with grey-browns and underlying lavender marks, mainly around the center or at the larger end; rounded-oval; 17 x 14 mm. Incubation: 14 - 15 days; by both sexes.
Young
Altricial, nidicolous. Fledge in 12 - 15 days.
Subspecies
Closely related to and often considered to form a superspecies with Steel-blue Flycatcher (Myiagra ferrocyanea), Makira Flycatcher (Myiagra cervinicauda), Melanesian Flycatcher (Myiagra caledonica), Vanikoro Flycatcher (Myiagra vanikorensis) and Samoan Flycatcher (Myiagra albiventris). Subspecies intergrade where they meet in Australia. A clinal increase in size from north to south.
The following 6 subspecies are recognised:
rubecula (Latham, 1801) - South-eastern Australia from the Clarence River Drainage Basin, inland to the slopes of the Great Divide and south and south-west to central-western Vic., and in winter extending north to north-eastern Queensland and occasionally south-central New Guinea.
concinna Gould, 1848 - Northern Australia from the Kimberley Divide, northern WA, east through Arnhem Land, NT to southern Gulf of Carpentaria, north-western Qld and south to the Fitzroy River Drainage, WA, Victoria and Roper River Drainages, NT and Gulf of Carpentaria Drainages, north-western Qld.
yorki Mathews, 1912 - North-eastern and central-eastern Australia from the Burdekin River Drainage, north-eastern Qld, south to New South Wales - Qld border and inland to the Great Divide, and in winter extending north to Cape York Peninsula, northern Qld.
papuana Rothschild & Hartert, 1918 - Savannas of southern New Guinea and probably on Boigu Island, northern Torres Strait.
sciurorum Rothschild & Hartert, 1918 - Archipelagoes of eastern New Guinea.
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