The Southern Emu-wren is a species of bird

Bird

Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

 in the Maluridae

Maluridae

The Maluridae are a family of small, insectivorous passerine birds endemic to Australia and New Guinea. Commonly known as wrens, they are unrelated to the true wrens of the Northern Hemisphere...

 family. It is endemic to Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

. Its natural habitat

Habitat

* Habitat , a place where a species lives and grows*Human habitat, a place where humans live, work or play** Space habitat, a space station intended as a permanent settlement...

s are temperate forest

Forest

A forest, also referred to as a wood or the woods, is an area with a high density of trees. As with cities, depending where you are in the world, what is considered a forest may vary significantly in size and have various classification according to how and what of the forest is composed...

s and Mediterranean-type shrubby vegetation.

Taxonomy

The Southern Emu-wren is one of three species of the genus Stipiturus, commonly known as emu-wrens, found across southern and central Australia. It was first described by naturalist George Shaw

George Shaw

George Shaw was an English botanist and zoologist.Shaw was born at Bierton, Buckinghamshire and was educated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, receiving his M.A. in 1772. He took up the profession of medical practitioner. In 1786 he became the assistant lecturer in botany at Oxford University...

 in 1798 as Muscicapa malachura, after being collected in the Port Jackson (Sydney) district. Its species name is derived from the Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

  ouros "tail". It described as the "Soft-tailed Flycatcher", native name Mur-re-a-nera when painted between 1788 and 1797 by Thomas Watling

Thomas Watling

Thomas Watling was an early Australian painter and illustrator. Originally from Scotland, he was transported as a convict to Sydney, in the newly established Colony of New South Wales, in 1792 for forging banknotes. In Sydney he worked with John White, the colony's Surgeon General, copying...

, one of a group known collectively as the Port Jackson Painter

Port Jackson Painter

The Port Jackson Painter is a term used to describe one or more unknown watercolour artists working in Sydney, Australia from 1788 through to the 1790s. The painting are of plants, animals and life in Sydney. Many believe that they were the naval officers of the time who had both the time and the...

. Another painting in the same series yielded the indigenous name Mereangeree. Notes on this latter drawing suggest an alternate name of emu- or cassowary titmouse, from its soft tail feathers. Another Sydney region indigenous name Merion Binnion was reported by Major-General Thomas Davies to translate as "Cassowary (Emu) bird".

The skin of a male Southern Emu-wren somehow ended up in the collection of Coenraad Jacob Temminck

Coenraad Jacob Temminck

Coenraad Jacob Temminck was a Dutch aristocrat and zoologist.Temminck was the first director of the National Natural History Museum at Leiden from 1820 until his death. His Manuel d'ornithologie, ou Tableau systematique des oiseaux qui se trouvent en Europe was the standard work on European birds...

, who believed it to be from Java. From there it as named by François Levaillant La Queue Gazée The Gauze-tailed Warbler. The mistake was not picked up for another 55 years. Veillot defined the genus Malurus

Malurus

Malurus is a genus of bird in the Maluridae family.It contains the following species:* White-shouldered Fairywren * Lovely Fairywren * Purple-crowned Fairywren...

and placed the Southern Emu-wren within it, giving it the name Malurus palustris.

It derives its common name from its tail feathers, the loosely barbed nature of which resembles feathers of the Emu

Emu

The Emu Dromaius novaehollandiae) is the largest bird native to Australia and the only extant member of the genus Dromaius. It is the second-largest extant bird in the world by height, after its ratite relative, the ostrich. There are three subspecies of Emus in Australia...

, the irony being the emu-wrens are among the smallest of Australian birds, and the Emu the largest.

Up to eleven subspecies have been described, with seven currently recognised:

• S. malachurus malachurus, the nominate subspecies, is found along the eastern coastline from Noosa Heads in Queensland south through New South Wales and Victoria and to the mouth of the Murray River in southeastern South Australia. It remains east and south of the Great Dividing Range.
• S. malachurus littleri was described by Gregory Mathews in 1912. It is found across Tasmania.
• S. malachurus intermedius is a darker-plumaged race from the Mount Lofty Ranges in South Australia.
• S. malachurus halmaturinus described by Parsons in 1920 is found on Kangaroo Island. It is the largest race.
• S. malachurus parimeda is found on the southern tip of the Eyre Peninsula. It was described in 1981.
• S. malachurus westernensis is found in southwest Western Australia.
• S. malachurus hartogi is restricted to Dirk Hartog Island.

Description

The adult male has rusty-brown upperparts with streaks of black, the crown more reddish and grey-brown wings. It has a sky blue throat, upper chest and eyebrow. The tail is double the body length, and is composed of six filamentous feathers, the central two of which are longer than the lateral ones. The underparts are pale red-brown, paler on the belly. The bill is black and the feet and eyes are brown. The female is darker streaked and lacks the blue plumage and redder crown. Its bill is brown with a pale grey base.

Distribution and habitat

Throughout its range, the Southern Emu-wren inhabits marshes, low heathland and dune areas.

cited text

• BirdLife International 2004. Stipiturus malachurus. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Downloaded on 27 July 2007.