Australian Birds

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Common name: Green Catbird

Scientific name: Ailuroedus crassirostris

Family: Ptilonorhynchidae

Description

The Green Catbird is a large, stout green bird, spotted white, with a dusky crown, nape and face and a white bill. The eye is red. Juveniles are duller in colour.

Similar species

The Spotted Catbird, A. melanotis, is extremely similar, but widely separated in its range. It tends to be much brighter green and paler below. The Green Catbird can resemble the immature or female Satin Bowerbird, which has a distinctly blue eye, a dark bill and a more scalloped patterning on the underbody.

Distribution

The Green Catbird is found along the east coast of Australia, from south-eastern Queensland to southern New South Wales.

Habitat

The Green Catbird is found in temperate and sub-tropical rainforest and paperbarks, and sometimes adjacent eucalypt forest.

Seasonal movements

Sedentary.

Feeding

The Green Catbird eats fruit, notably figs, flowers, and other plant material. It will also kill baby birds to feed its own young during breeding season and will eat small reptiles too. They usually feed in pairs or small groups, moiving from tree to tree in the mid to upper canopy.

Breeding

Male Green Catbirds do not build a bower. They pair monogamously with a female, helping her to defend an all-purpose territory and feeding her throughout the year. The nest is a bulky cup of twigs, leaves and vines, usually in a prickly shrub, treefork, tree fern or low tree.The nest has an unusual layer of wet, soft wood beneath the lining of fine twigs and leaves, making the nest very large and bulky. Both sexes feed and look after the young.

Demonstration site only. Content taken from Birds in Backyards website.