Diamond Firetail Stagonopleura guttata

Length 10–13 cm; wingspan 18–21 cm; weight 17 g.

Although occurring in small flocks throughout the year, Diamond Firetails are often seen in pairs or singly during the breeding season and in small family parties after breeding, and the species sometimes forms larger flocks outside the breeding season, with such flocks sometimes comprising hundreds of birds.  They often occur in mixed-species flocks with Double-barred Finches and occasionally with other finches.  They are often quite tame and easily observed as they forage on the ground, close to trees or other vegetation, hopping rapidly across the ground, and they sometimes lunge to grasp seed-heads or alight on food plants to take seeds from standing grass.  The flight is rapid and undulating or bouncing, on short, rounded wings.  When flushed, flocks fly as a small, tight group directly to a nearby tree, with an audible whirring of their wings and the red of their rumps and uppertail-coverts prominent.  They often give a mournful whistling call from elevated perches such as dead branches.

HABITAT
Diamond Firetails occur mostly in the foothills of the Great Dividing Range and farther inland, where they usually inhabit eucalypt woodlands, open forests and other lightly timbered habitats, such as farmland with remnant trees, or grasslands with scattered trees, typically with an open or sparse understorey of shrubs, small trees or regrowth, and grass ground-cover.  They often occur in vegetation along watercourses.  The forests and woodlands they occur in are usually dominated by eucalypts such as red gums (particularly River Red Gum and Blakely’s Red Gum) and other gums (e.g. Yellow Gum, Spotted Gum, Manna Gum), stringybarks (especially Broad-leaved Stringybark), or box–ironbark eucalypts (especially Yellow, Grey and White Box), though they sometimes also inhabit mallee woodlands, including low mallee heathland or shrubby clearings at the edge of mallee–Broombush shrublands.  Diamond Firetails are sometimes also recorded in woodlands dominated by casuarinas, such as Buloke or Belah, and cypress-pines, which sometimes grow in mixed associations with eucalypts.

DISTRIBUTION
Endemic to south-eastern Australia.

STATUS

• Vulnerable in New South Wales
• Vulnerable in Victoria
• Vulnerable in South Australia

THREATS
The species is adversely affected by clearing of woodlands for agriculture and urban development, and sometimes also by replacement of native grasses with exotic ones.  In ACT, small remnant populations of Diamond Firetails are able to inhabit the margins of developed areas and some reserves, but are absent from suburban areas. A popular cagebird, great numbers of Firetails were formerly trapped for aviculture, possibly causing declines in local populations.  Individual Firetails very occasionally collide with windows, and are sometimes killed by cats.

MOVEMENTS
Mainly resident or sedentary throughout the species’ range, but movements of <200 km have been recorded in parts of western Victoria, and seasonal occurrence or movements have been reported elsewhere in Victoria and South Australia.

Return to Previous Page