Redthroat

Redthroats are a typical LBJ (little brown job), rather plain and shy ground foraging birds that tend to duck for cover when disturbed. They are found across a large area of arid (1) Australia in a variety of habitats. They can be hard to find and tricky to identify unless the male is seen with the distinctive red or rufous throat patch to help nail the ID – the female has few distinguishing features. The males call during the breeding season (Aug-Nov), often from the top of a shrub, and this can be a way to locate them. Pizzey ranks Redthroats, along with the Shy Heathwren, as the sweetest singer of inland arid scrubs.

Please click on photos to enlarge.

I have often looked for Redthroats over the years without much success, only finding one once on a walk near the historic Alice Springs Telegraph Station site. Recently while camped at Hell Hole Gorge National Park in outback Queensland I flushed a pair of Redthroats in moderately dense scrub only 100 metres from our camp site. The female immediately fled the scene however the male stayed to check me out from the cover of a dense shrub giving me the chance to identify him and get a few rough ID confirmation photos.

The next photo shows a section of the habitat where the Redthroats were found.

Over the next couple of days the pair were located in the same patch of shrubs on a number of occasions so I thought they may be occupying a breeding territory but as the male was not singing they had not yet commenced breeding. This was confirmed when on another walk to check on the birds and try to get some photos the male was found by his loud and sharp scolding call which it soon became apparent was directed not at me but a pair of Splendid Fairy-wrens. The Redthroat male was chasing the wrens out of his territory. While he was occupied with the wren eviction he disregarded me so I was able to get some photos.

Observing bird behaviour in the field is an important aid to bird photography and sometimes, as in this case, the interaction of two bird species can provide an opportunity to photograph a bird that is otherwise difficult to approach.

Note (1) Arid Australia is defined by the area where the average annual rainfall divided by the average annual evaporation is equal to or less than 0.4 – just over 70% of the Australian mainland land mass meets this criteria. Some would describe this same area as desert.