Magpie-lark (Peewee) - Grallina cyanoleuca

Magpie-lark (Peewee)

Grallina cyanoleuca

Other Names: Australian Magpie-Lark, Peewee, Mudlark
Family: Dicruridae (Monarchs, Fantails, Drongo,19 species in Australia)
Size: 27 cm
Distribution: All of Australia except a couple of small parts of central australia and a strip going from the southern WA/SA border up to the northwest WA coast.
Status: Common
Habitat: Open areas, roadsides, often near water.
References: Simpson and Day, Reader's Digest

The name magpie-lark is used in the bird books but everyone in real life calls this bird the peewee. They are in a different family to magpies, currawongs, and butcherbirds, though I often think of them as being a similar type of bird.

The male peewee (pictuerd below) has a black throat and a black face with a white stripe above the eye. The female has a white throat and white around her beak.

Magpie-lark (Peewee) - Grallina cyanoleuca
Photo: Winmalee, Blue Mountains NSW. High Resolution (1878 x 1323).

Some Birdwatching Resources

Slater Field Guide to Australian Birds, Peter Slater, Pat Slater and Raoul Slater. This is a smaller field guide, and its advantage is it is easy to carry around. Its size is 21.3 x 11.4 x 2.8 centimetres, or 8.4 x 4.5 x 1.1 inches in the old scale. So it is a good one to get if you want to have your field guide with you out in the field. Unlike most of the field guides it also has illustrations of the eggs of all the birds that breed in Australia. It has very good reviews on Amazon.

Click here to Purchase from Australia (Booktopia)

Purchase from Australia (Angus & Robertson)

Click here to purchase from Australia (The Nile) $28.45 AUD (May be unavailable)

Click here to purchase from Australia (Fishpond) May be expensive.

Click here to purchase from Amazon

Field Guide to Australian Birds, by Michael Morcombe. This one has colour drawings of the eggs and the nests which not many other field guides do (I can't think of any that do). It's an excellent field guide and one of the four main ones (the other three being above this one). The weakness of this field guide is that some of the pictures of the birds aren't as good (or accurate) as the other three most used field guides. It's also the heaviest though there is a pocket edition which is much smaller and lighter.

Purchase from Australia (Booktopia)

Purchase from Australia (Angus & Robertson)

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Magpie-lark (Peewee)

Grallina cyanoleuca

Some Birdwatching Resources

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