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Eastern Yellow RobinAlternative names: Formerly "Southern Yellow Robin" and "Northern Yellow Robin", now considered as two races of one species |
Sightings
Eastern Yellow Robins (race "chrysorrhoa") are very accommodating customers. One can approach them quite easily and have a close look.
Seen in the summer of 2004 around the place where we lived at the time, 20 km south of Narrabri, New South Wales. No more sightings there until May 2006, when a family of three came in during a period of drought.
Also sighted on a trip to the east of the dividing range, in the area from Armidale to Dorrigo and Iluka, New South Wales, in wintertime.
In January 2006 we spotted a ragged-looking bird at Sawn Rocks (Mount Kaputar National Park) that we think is an immature Eastern Yellow Robin.
Seen regularly by us in the years 2007-2008 on the western fringes of Mt. Kaputar National Park, 30 km east of Narrabri. There we saw a bird hustling a Brown Treecreeper.
Photos
Frontal view of an Eastern Yellow Robin (click on image for larger version)
Lateral view of the same bird (click on image for larger version)
Close to frontal view of an Eastern Yellow Robin sitting in a lemon tree (click on image for full-size display)
Lateral view slightly from behind of an Eastern Yellow Robin (click on image for full-size display)
Eastern Yellow Robin in brilliant early-morning sunlight (click on image for larger version)
Eastern Yellow Robin hunting off a tree trunk (click on image for larger version)
Eastern Yellow Robins are the birds with the most varied plumages while maturing (and probably the most scruffy-looking immature birds in the Australian bird world...). Various colour schemes can be seen in the photos below that may be a sequence in age, but we do not know this for certain.
Immature Eastern Yellow Robin hiding amongst shrubs; one can see that the belly is starting to turn yellow, while the rest is still speckled with grey and looking ragged because the bird is moulting (click on image for larger version)
This mottled bird is in the process of moulting into its adult plumage (click on image for larger version)
This specimen looks particularly ragged; photo courtesy of C. Kellenberg (click on image for larger version)
Here a somewhat older immature Eastern Yellow Robin that has only a few specks left in its now almost entirely yellow breast plumage
A comparison with the photo at the top of this page and the photo just above this one shows how the "collar" just under the grey chin patch is the first part of the breast plumage to develop the characteristic bright-yellow hue (click on image for larger version)
Nest
Bad photo of an Eastern Yellow Robin nest in the fork of a Eucalypt tree
Habits
In dense underbrush Eastern Yellow Robins are used by other bird species as "sentries". When their alarm call is heard, other birds will leave the area or hide in the underbrush.
One peculiarity that we noticed in May of 2006 is that Eastern Yellow Robins came to take a bath at our place late after sunset, in the last twilight of the day, when most other birds had already settled on their roosts.
And, incredibly, in a stand-off between a Willie Wagtail and an Eastern Yellow Robin over the rights to their favourite hunting ground, the latter came out ontop!
Usually Eastern Yellow Robins are found near the ground, hunting from perches that are typically less than 3 m high. However, occasionally we have seen them high up in eucalypt trees, at 10-20 m above ground.
At Dorrigo National Park we observed Eastern Yellow Robins that followed larger birds working through leaf litter (such as Superb Lyrebirds and Australian Brush-Turkeys) and then opportunistically picked their prey out of the dugouts.