Butcherbirds In Australia - The Executioners Of The Bird World
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ต.ค. 2023
- Butcherbirds In Australia - The Executioners Of The Bird World introduces you to the 5 species of butcherbird that live in Australia. I concentrate on the two most common: the pied butcherbird and the grey butcherbird.
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The 5 types of butcherbirds that live in Australia are: black-backed, grey, silver-backed, black, and pied.
Butcherbirds get their name from the way they hang their captured prey from spikes while they dismember it.
They will use twigs, barbed wire, or crevices in between branches to hang a carcass just like a butcher would hang meat from a hook.
They are very similar in appearance to the Australian magpie and are in fact from the same family. They have a more thickset appearance than a magpie. Magpies are more slender-looking and also have black bellies, whereas most butcherbirds, apart from the black butcherbird, have white bellies.
Pied butcherbirds are identifiable by their black hood. I liken it to an executioner's hood as it extends from the back of their necks, all across their heads and down to their chests.
Grey butcherbirds on the other hand have white throats and dark grey feathers on their backs.
Pied butcherbirds are 28 to 32 centimetres in length. Grey butcherbirds are 27 to 30 centimetres in length. Both species are smaller than the Australian magpie which is between 37 and 43 centimetres in length.
The grey butcherbird cutout used in the measurement section of the video was taken by Ken Griffiths (sourced from Canva).
The silver-backed butcherbird image was sourced from Wikimedia Commons. Graham Winterflood, CC BY-SA 4.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons
The black butcherbird image is from BirdImages (sourced from Canva).
The pied butcherbird, Australian magpie, and grey butcherbird images were taken by me. See more of my work at barrycallisterphotography.com.au.
All bird distribution maps come from birdsoftheworld.org.
Thank you for watching this video today about Australian butcherbirds. If you enjoyed the video, please let me know by hitting the Like button. You might also consider subscribing to the Birdwatch World TH-cam channel.
#australianbirds #birdsofaustralia #butcherbirds #birdwatching #birdwatchworld #birdspecies
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I also adore these beautiful birds and have spent hours over the years observing our little inter generational family of greys. They are so smart and recognise people. Thanks
The pied is my favourite, the most incredible song. I heard a pair of them sing a duet, one singing high while the other was singing low and then they would change, it is a sound I have only heard once but it will never be forgotten.
In my opinion they have the most beautiful song in the garden
Grey butcherbirds are my absolute favourite bird. We had greys around our house and fed them, but the pieds came and muscled them out, though we could still call and get a reply from the greys who were across the gully. But when a python started moving towards our house, our butcherbirds, magpies and noisy miners all tried to repel it from our house and some tried to prevent me getting into danger. Then the greys across the gully returned to help repel the snake, which eventually gave up. Loyal and brave, even after they had no benefit from helping their human friends. Absolutely wonderful birds.
Thanks for sharing that amazing story. Thank you for watching also. 😀
Great story. Only Greys here and they ignore the Gould’s goanna but baby Grey does the major house protection when the Kooka turns up. Baby is a savage! 😂
They would be defending themself from the snake. That you see it as defence of people is probably not important to them.
oh! ... I always thought it was the Magpies that would sing that quirky song.
Thank you so much for the video. Butcher Birds, are by far right up there, in terms of my favorite bird. From their wonderful songs/calls to their behaviour, I find them to be real characters.
Thank you for watching @andrewburbury2261
We have looked for years and have yet to see a butcherbird impaling an animal. We have lots of butcherbirds on our property and see them regularly but have never seen that. It must be quite a rare thing to see. Very informative video with lots of fantastic footage👍
I've had both pied and grey butcher birds visit different places i have lived. I love having them visit and watching their babies grow. In one place I would wake to their song. I would sing back, not nearly as tunefully, but they didn't seem to mind and responded kindly to my joining in. It was incredible.
I have some friendly butcher birds, and what distinguishes them is their amazing aerobatic capability to take food / prey in flight. They are fast, manouverable and deadly accurate and respond well to my voice and gestures! Very smart.
We have a pied butcherbird that regularly hangs out with me when I do work in the yard. It is very talkative and a welcome hunter of bugs and spiders.
I love the family of pied butcher birds that have been visiting me to get food and to torment my poor cat Bob 🐈⬛ for years. They are beautiful singers and so lovely and friendly,,, to humans.
I love the butcher birds song, so beautiful to listen to. Thank you for this informative video
I remember finding the hindquarters of a rat stuffed in one of the arms of a rotary washing line. Only one aptly named bird stores edibles that way.
Have had both species as family friends. Love them
They can also mimic the sound of the environment
Ever noticed how antsy and nervous maggies would get when the butcher's call could be heard
No, I have never noticed that. I'll have to watch out for it.
There's a pied butcher bird that visits my garden all the time. I have a lot of copper skinks around that keeps it coming back.
I was walking through a bit of urban bush in Brisbane a couple of weeks ago, when a Butcher Bird swooped me from behind, landed on a branch above me and gave a loud warning call. I had to beat a hasty retreat as two of them took turns swooping me. I had no idea they could behave just like Magpies!
We have the grey ones. They sing to us everyday. I call one of them, “ my pretty one”.
Incredible birds. Love them.
I’ve had multiple generations of magpies (also a few butcher birds I see about) live in my yard. They actually recognise you, they had baby’s recently that I feed now and then. They fully trust me and even wait outside my window in the mornings singing for me to get up and give them something to eat. The mother will come get the food and bring it to the juvenile waiting in the tree making a huge noise. We also have several wattle birds that have been nesting in the same tree for as long I’ve been here. 6years+
There's been a massive increase in Currawongs and Butcher birds. That increase has led me and many other bird watchers not seeing fairy wrens, scarlet honeyeaters, pardalotes, red brown and double-barred finches as well as fantails in our area. I am part of bird watching group and we share our sightings often but over the last 4 years there's certainly been a substantial decrease in these small birds all over the east coast of Australia. It would be helpful for the smaller birds that we do not feed Butcher birds and Currawongs as it leads to increased breeding cycle/brood which directly impacts the smaller bird species which due to predation.
@@TheDbradley1 lots of finches and wrens out at my mothers property. They like the short and bushy land in maraylya area western Sydney. They make these nests that are ball shaped with a funnel. There was lots of families of little blue ones in about 5+ nests I could see just on her 8acres farm. There is also lace monitor lizards in same area, there’s 5 dams on the property so wildlife is abundant.
Love butcher birds. Where
I used to live Ifound that different family groups have a different songs. There was at least 3 distinctive calls within a 15km radius. They all had the same beautiful tone but a different melody.
Bird populations in Perth seem to go thru a cycle of several years. sometimes crows dominate, sometimes magpies, sometimes wattle birds. This seems to change the visible presence of other birds. Layman’s observation mostly in one suburb
Cool birds
A beautiful video thank you; I've had many wonderful inter reactions with Butcher Birds as a gardener on the Mid North Coast of NSW for the past fourteen years, they've had many any easy dinner from what I've uncovered while doing my job, plus I got to know a few of them individually, they have real character and sometimes I've had to shoo them away so as not to hurt them with garden power tools. I've only been swooped once after whistling back 'spot on' a Butcher Birds song to it in a eucalyptus tree, it had been watching me for about ten minutes for me to uncover its dinner while singing its heart out, so that swooping was fair enough I'd say ;)
I once witnessed a butcher bird pin a baby bush turkey to the ground whilst ripping its feathers out . The bush turkey chick was still alive whilst it was doing this . These birds are brutal .
They may be. However, it is just life. They are doing their best to survive. Think of all the horrible things humans have done for much less than mere survival.
Beautiful birds, their calls are fabulous.
Ohhhh thanks alot from the endanger Wren of Tasmania. Get a grip. The butcher bird is not native.
Thanks Barry
No worries.
Butcher birds are very bold and friendly.
When I was living in Queensland
One would often visit me in the morning
It would sit on the arm of my chair and sing that beautiful song
I ended up feeding it little meat scraps
Was cheerful little guy
Did not know they had such a beautiful call.
The pied birds are the best singers.
I used to bribe them with a feed and I'd get a 10 minute performance.
Unlike most birds their songs aren't repetitious so you never know what you're going to get.
I love my Betty and Billy Butcher Bird - although Betty is far better at catching the meat bits I give them than her son Billy is...they are both so very gentle.
A very misunderstood bird. They are cool as, loyal, great parents, have life long partners, they are highly intelligent, can mimic countless bird songs and are family friends to our family in QLD Australia. Best singing bird in Australia.
Very true. They're my favourite bird. Love watching them in my yard and of course I love their calls. Their name is really unfortunate.
I love there song
just like to add, the northern hemisphere Shrikes are called butcher birds as well,
they do exactly they some thing of impaling their prey on thorns etc.
Thanks for sharing that. Thanks for watching also. 🙂
They chase my parrots... Cheeky things they are !
I have a pied butcher bird that comes to visit everyday. Along with 4 Maggie's.
Pretty good summary. Something to clarify is it is a habit of the sort of behaviourally similar but not closely related shrikes of the northern hemisphere, to impale prey on spikes. Butcherbirds apparently don't do that. Although they will wedge prey in crevices and forks in tree branches to assist when pulling apart their food. (As they don't have strong feet of raptors.) Admittedly it is not a big difference but it is there. The name origin of butcherbird does sort of hint at this behaviour that actually applies more to shrikes.
I sometimes get black butcherbirds coming through my kitchen window to steal food
(Warning about this shocking story being told!!!!) My Mum mentioned that when she was young the family had a small cage with a couple of Zebra Finches and a Butcher Bird came over and waited for it to be close to the cage wire and grabbed it by the head , leaving the body behind!! I went up to a Pied Butcherbird on a fence whilst I was holidaying in Noosa Queensland Australia and I wasnt really far from it , just a couple of metres (6 feet) from it !! So friendly !!
Dad's been feeding families of butcher birds for years. They will come and tap on the glass back door to tell him that he's late! Some will land on his wrist and eat from his hand. My brother once commented that the butcher birds get fed more than him and Dad replied that it was about love & the pecking order of life... and that he was always welcome to get his own house and move out. 🤣
I hope he is not feeding them mince as it is very bad for them. It does not contain any of the nutrients they need for effective metabolism. Meal worms are a better food source for them, either live or dried.
We must change the way we feed our wild birds, or we will not have them to appreciate in the future.
A great book to read for responsible feeding of our beautiful birds is Feeding The Birds At Your Table A Guide For Australia by Darryl Jones.
@@birdwatchworld When did I mention mincemeat? It's never been mince. Dad's 86 and has been a bird lover all of his life and knows a great deal about Australian native birds. I was just sharing his particular love of butcher birds... but thanks for the pious lecture, and for trying to push a book. Let me guess, you get a kickback from Darryl Jones? 👍
It's funny that you're called Barry and you are talking about butcherbirds - my daughter has a butcherbird friend who visits the back deck regularly and she's named him Barry! Question: is it ok for Barry to eat raisins?
i dont see or hear many in adelaide but on the sunshine coast its a different story!
The Butcherbird sounds so Aussie lol, what's next "the fish and chip shop hawk"?
Does anyone know how long they live for. We have a friendly family that get feed from us for about 13 years. One of them who I call sweetie comes and sits on my hand, she brings her babies down to meet us each year.
According to Wikipedia, the Australian magpie is not a corvid, as would be the case with the European magpie. You learn something new every day.
You do, indeed. Though, I wouldn't trust Wikipedia to deliver reliable information (even though it did in this case).
Take a look at birdsoftheworld.org. You might also like birdlife.org.au for just Aussie birds.
Thanks for watching my video. 🙂
Someone told me that Australian magpies are actually burcher birds. Aside from the size difference they seem to have a lot of similarities.
I've heard them mimic horses, lots of othe birds, car,budgies, amazing sounds as I'm writing this there's one out side calling.
Nice video. Thank you for sharing. Good luck my friend.
Thank you, too.
Thank you.I feed 2 butcher birds & 1 has got It even flys quite friendly.They fly off when I feed my Maggie’s but 1 whistles 2 me early in the morning.I feel it’s saying” get up,I need a feed.”1flys into my home.Just love them but others hate them cause they killed their caged birds.More info please.
Great video and information about the butcher birds.
Another difference between butchers and magpies is butchers prefer to hop while maggies walk.
A bit more of their wonderful melodious song would've been nice Barry.
Cheers 👍😀
Great video mate.
Thanks 👍
They're kind of cute.
The most beautiful sound at piccanniny dawn in the middle of nowhere
Thanks. Ive noticed they have regional dialects to their songs. I grew up learning to mimic the North New South Wales 2 songs, but then discovered the Melbourne birds calls are completely different. Your video had more ive not heard.
Thanks for watching.
❤ this!! I wash my food before preparation too,thank you for this knowledge which I believe is another beautiful burs trait!! They're amazing but this is another interesting fact I find inspirational too
I am still missing a piece of my ear after it got taken by a butcherbird when I was 8 while walking back through the park from swimming coaching
No way?! That must've been a scary experience for you at that age. I had no idea they attacked humans. 😯
Thank you!
Thank you, my partner is a bird person, and now I am able to claim a little knowledge, that I have gathered by myself, Cheers
Hi Barry, I live with Butcher Birds and have never noticed their butcher habits.
Their call in the quiet bush is certainly amazing. I have to check now if they Pied or Grey.
G'day Barry
Thanks for a great video. Can you explain how to tell male from femail pied butcher birds please? Can I add - same question for magpies please?
Female Pied Buthcherbirds are similar to males. Some will have slightly duller black or blackish-brown hood and saddle. The females may also also have a grey tinge to their collar and smaller white patches on their primaries (feathers on the outer portion of the wings).
As for Magpies, the females will have a grey tinge or white scales on their hindneck and back. Males have clean white hindnecks. This can be harder to distinguish in the black-backed sub-species, as they have all black backs. Again, though, female black-backeds will have a grey tinge to their hindneck.
I hope that clears it up and doesn't make it more confusing! 😂
@@birdwatchworld Thanks for taking the time to reply ))) one of the magpies that visit suddenly stopped coming. thought that it had been driven out of the area but with your description, maybe what I thought was a younger bird might be a female and she might be setting up house. I hope so because it has/had the most friendly personality ))) but who can have favourites when there are a bunch of them along with the butcher birds .... what characters they are! )))
Just about to ask you why are they called Butcher Birds
BUT
YOU answered that straight off.
Interesting Video.
What about the Male and Female Blue Wren !
Where are they now ?
Thanks Bazza 🇦🇺👀
butcher bird around my house are grey butcher bird. they have songs unique to this cliche.
Yeah butcherbirds are a hard bitten critter alright however they do not always get their own way .. the first bird problem we had around here concerned spotted turtledoves an introduced species called cuckoo birds that made a "coocooo" racket from morning to night .. one bull bird would get onto the power lines and let you have it all day, as well they try to make eye contact with you.
That problem was solved when the neighbours on both sides began feeding butcherbirds which have a pathological hatred for that species, thus I was driving up the street coming home from work one day, and there was a butcherbird dragging the dead body of the same bull turtledove across the road.
However feeding butcherbirds creates problems of its own since they are a very aggressive species and will hold households to ransom just to get food .. so that is what happened with the spotted turtledoves they have not been seen around here for yrs, noisy miner birds have been here for a long time however more recently they have undergone a population explosion.
Thus the "chirp chirp chirp" coming from scores of feathered throats goes on from dawn to dusk every day .. at first I was quite fond of them since they drove the crows away whereas previously a mob of crows who live further up into the hills moved in across the street, the racket they made went on all day .. there are still a few crows but they don't make so much noise.
Ok all that being said .. about a week ago there was a butcherbird on one end of a scaffold some workmen had erected nearby, there was a NMB at the other end which was joined by another noisy miner before both of them got stuck into the BB, he held his own and one of the NMB's flew off while the BB counter attacked the one that was still there with a full beak charge to its front, which it evaded but which would have killed it otherwise.
The NMB's are a highly aggressive species I have seen them attack herons on the bank of the B'bane River, they attack ibis as well and a few days ago there were three of them bullying a magpie on some power lines .. in the natural environment owls and hawks keep them in check, now there are thousands of them in the suburbs and all you hear all day is "tweet tweet tweet."
A shame they're not a common sight in Adelaide. Although I have seen and heard them in the Riverland only a couple of hundred kilometres away.
Thank you so much now I know which bird it was that I saw on the fence each morning in Ballarat Victoria. It was the Grey Butcher bird, Id heard about them never saw one until 8 years ago and never seen another one since. Are they few in numbers or just elusive?
When I lived in Derby in Western Australia,I saw and heard my first pied Butcherbird,I thought at first it was a magpie,it was singing so beautifully,I also saw it many times catch honey eaters but thankfully didn't see it imale them ugh!!!.Their beautiful caroling is a delight.But I still prefer magpies who dont impale their food.
I've never seen a Butcherbird impale its food. Nor have I seen photos or videos of it. It makes me wonder if it might be just a story someone made up about them. 😂
@@birdwatchworld no its very true my neighbour in WA told me he had seen it,and it was very brutal.Do some research it is not a myth..but I wish it was
I did extensive research for this video, but I couldn't find any images of them impaling their prey. However, I am sure it's true. I was just being cheeky. 🙂
@@birdwatchworld 🤣🤣
Thanks Barry, I really enjoyed this Butcher Bird video. Especially useful is knowing what they and the Magpies eat. Should I occasionally feed the Magpies? Or is it not recommended? They visit every day.
I am still sitting on the fence regarding the feeding of wild birds.
If you must feed Magpies, please do not feed them mince.
When omnivores such as magpies eat prey, they consume the meat but also ingest other parts of the animal such as fur, bone, feathers, etc. All that extra stuff provides them with a healthy ratio of calcium and phosphorus essential to their metabolism. Mince does not have these minerals.
In addition, mince is sticky and particals of it can get stuck in their beaks, spoil, and grow bacteria that can make the birds sick.
If you have to feed them mince, you can add digestible calcium powder (half a teaspoon for every cup of mince) or a commercially available insectivore supplement (available from pet stores.)
A better alternative would be to dig up some worms to give them, though this would be hard to keep up with. You could also feed them meal worms, either live or dried.
A great book to look into for information on bird feeding is Feeding The Birds At Your Table by Darryl Jones.
Thanks for watching. Let me know how you get on with feeding your magpies. 🙂
It probably does not matter a lot what one person does. However, if you want to have small birds around your garden, it is preferable not to feed these predatory birds. So much harder for wrens, thornbills, finches , etc to survive, if there is a big population of butcherbirds, currawongs, etc.
❤
Them and the crows have nearly wiped out every baby duck around here.
Unfortunately, that's nature. It's not always pretty.
Think of how many species humans have wiped out completely. And we're not finished yet. 🙁
They are smart, I breed finch at my home and live in a predator bird breeding zone it seems with parks near me. The butcher birds will fly onto a finch cage and frighten them and then catch them and pull what they can through the cage with no mercy. One butcher bird got 4 birds in 10 mins one day as they watch me leave the house then find ways under my netting. They teach their babies their tricks and show their young where birds in cages live. I respect them but they are hard to live with when they want your pet birds. I can't put a cage with birds out side for even 2 mins as they will come that fast.
Wow, I have heard about this behaviour. There's been a massive increase in Currawongs and Butcher birds. That increase has led me and many other bird watchers not seeing fairy wrens, scarlet honeyeaters, pardalotes, red brown and double-barred finches as well as fantails in our area. I am part of bird watching group and we share our sightings often but over the last 4 years there's certainly been a substantial decrease in these small birds all over the east coast of Australia. It would be helpful for the smaller birds that we do not feed Butcher birds and Currawongs as it leads to increased breeding cycle/brood which directly impacts the smaller bird species which due to predation.
@@TheDbradley1 Just last Feb a group of over 60 Currawongs decided to change sleeping spots from about 1km away to the tree next door. They nearly fly into us arriving here each night now. I like birds so forgive them for wanting my finch ad keep my finch safe. If I put a bird cage outside my front door within 5 mins the butcher birds and the yellow eye minors and magpies come and see if birds are in there to eat. It is devastating finding just heads in bars of cages - they get under my net system if the can, eat then try to leave.
Weird question: looking at the distribution map of the pied butcher bird, it seems peculiarly precise. There are a couple of holes east of the kimberlies, and some slender fingers protruding here and there. The question is, how is it that the distribution could be known this precisely, given that little money would be available for such studies? Is it inferred from a temperature distribution or other known data?
That's a good question, not a weird one. All the distribution maps I use are from birdsoftheworld.org, which is a Cornell Lab of Ornithology site. They source their range maps from eBird, BirdLife International, and NatureServe/Robert Ridgley. I would assume that compiling information from all of those sources, they would be able to come up with very accurate distribution maps.
Where know to be called the Assassin Bird .north coast nsw.
They love cheese .
What about the Brown? We have brown here in NSW Mid North Coast, they are small birds
Juvenile pied and grey butchetbirds are brown and white. The brown is replaced with black as they moult into adult plumage.
Are they related to the Kookaburra species which are also meat eaters?
No, they are not related to Kookaburras. Kookaburras are in the Alcedinidae or Kingfisher family, whereas Butcherbirds are frim the Artamidae family that includes Woodswallows, Bellmagpies, and Allies. It is the same family as Magpies and Currawongs.
👍#144
They don't dive bomb humans during nesting, but your dog will cop it!!
I HATE the things. I NEVER feed birds, nor do we attract birds to our garden. Low and behold, I was barbequing a few weeks ago, and muggins decided to land on my chopping board, cm's from me, and help itself to my raw meat.
Last week, my partner and I were eating KFC in a park, 7 of them (Alfred Hitchcock style), on the table, and as my partner lifted his burger to his mouth, this maggot swooped and grabbed his burger.
I walk every day, and there's a particular area in my suburb, where this drivel of the earth, swoops me, like a magpie, in 3 parallel streets. And this has happened for four years now, in Spring. I HATE the things and wish I could take a tennis racket to them, but they're too quick!
My Mum would warn me as a kid to be really careful putting pet Budgies out in the backyard because of the Butcher Birds could attack the caged birds and kill them swiftly.
Yes, butcherbirds are certainly a significant danger to birds in cages or aviaries. They will attack them and pul bodies through the wires. They will also pursue them till the birds panic and can kill themselves by trying to escape and flying into the wires.
How unfair to single out this bird as a butcher. I know all the corvids are capable of taking chicks for food. Surely we are the pot calling the kettle black as we do much worse things for food? We need a new name for the butcher bird.❤❤❤
I agree that we have done far worse, and we continue to do so. I think we need to update our names for a lot of things. 🙂
Speed up your speech, we are not dummies
Not everyone who might watch this will be proficient in English, but thanks for the input.
Cool vid, like a Butcher they store there excess meat on a larder.
I can’t remember ever seeing any of those birds. Weird, must be me.
The Pied Butcherbird and Grey Butcherbird are very common. You may have seen some and thought they were magpies. 🙂