The black-faced woodswallow (Artamus cinereus) is a woodswallow of the genus Artamus native to Australia, New Guinea, and the Sunda Islands, including Timor. It is long and is the most widespread species in the family Artamidae. Woodswallows have a soft call with chiff, chap and chattering calls which can include vocal mimicry

Increased vegetation due to inappropriate fire regimes has caused the woodswallows numbers to decline since 1993 in the Cape York Peninsula.

Taxonomy

The black-faced woodswallow was formally described in 1817 by the French ornithologist Louis Pierre Vieillot and given the current binomial name Artamus cinereus. The specific epithet is Latin meaning "ash-grey" or "ash-coloured". Although Vieillot gave the locality as the island of Timor, he had copied the description by the Dutch zoologist Coenraad Jacob Temminck of the "L'angroyan gris" from "la nouvelle Galle meridionale" (New South Wales) that had been published in 1807. Temminck mentioned that the central tail feathers were entirely black which is consistent with Australian race and but not with the race found on Timor where the central tail feathers have white tips. Temminck's specimen is preserved in the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie in the Netherlands. In 1982 Gerlof Mees designated this as a lectotype and transferred the name cinereus from the race on Timor to the race found in southwest Australia.

  • A. c. perspicillatus Bonaparte, 1850 – Semau, Timor, Leti and Sermata (east Lesser Sunda Islands)
  • A. c. normani (Mathews, 1923) – Trans-Fly (central south New Guinea) and Cape York Peninsula, northeast Queensland (northeast Australia)
  • A. c. inkermani Keast, 1958 – central east to southeast Queensland (central east Australia)(includes dealbatus Schodde & Mason, 1999, as a synonym.)
  • A. c. melanops Gould, 1865 – central, north Western Australia to central north Queensland and north Victoria (west, northwest Australia to inland southeast)
  • A. c. cinereus Vieillot, 1817 – southwest Western Australia (southwest Australia)

Within Australia the Great Dividing Range, the Gregory Range and the eastern edge of the Carpentarian grasslands separates the range of the two subspecies. To the east of the range are the subspecies with white vents, while to the west are the black vented subspecies. Mitochondrial DNA studies revealed random intermixing.

Description

right|SW Queensland, Australia

The black-faced woodswallow is in length, and weighs . It has a blue-grey beak with a black tip and a black face mask which extends from the base of the bill up to and around the eyes. It has ash grey plumage, which is lighter around the breast with darker wings, and silver underwings. The tail is black with a white tip.

The subspecies are differentiated by black or white colouration of their tail vents. The white-vented subspecies A. c. normani and A. c. inkermani are found on the Cape York Peninsula and northern Queensland respectively. The black-vented A.c. cinereus occurs in south west Australia, while A. c. melanops occurs in northern Australia and Lesser Sunda Islands, including Timor.

Behaviour and ecology

Food and feeding

They are mainly insectivorous. Woodswallows are aerial feeders that can soar, hover and dive to catch insect prey which include moths, and also often feed on the ground taking ground insects, or insects caught on the wing to be dismembered. Woodswallows have brush- like tongues for gleaning nectar and will occasionally feed on flowers. probably as an adaptation to an erratic climate in arid and semi-arid conditions. Woodswallows also exhibit a tendency to flock and cluster roost, during the day and night. Clustering assists with thermoregulation, wind protection, social drive and reduces predation risk.

Nests are built in tree hollows, crevices, forks of branches or on top of stumps. The same areas are occupied each year. white to dull white in colouration with blotched markings which are red-brown and lavender speckling. These losses are thought to be due to vegetation thickening. However, a recent change in fire management, specifically storm-burning, has resulted in a cessation of woodswallow decline. Storm-burning has produced a more open vegetation structure, which is beneficial for insect feeding and nesting by the woodswallows.

  • ABID Images
  • On the HBW Internet Bird Collection