birds free wallpaper 99: Black-Faced Monarch

Sunday, 10 June 2012

Black-Faced Monarch

Black-Faced Monarch Biography

The Black-faced Monarch has a distinctive black face that does not extend across the eyes, grey upperparts, wings and upper breast, contrasting with a refocus (red-orange) belly. The dark eye has a thin black eye ring and a lighter area of pale grey around it. The blue-grey bill has a hooked tip. Young birds are similar but lack the black face, have a black bill and tend to have a brownish body and wings. The Black-faced Monarch is one of the monarch flycatchers, a forest and woodland-dwelling group of small insect-eating birds, and is strictly arboreal (found in trees)

The Black-faced Monarch resembles the Black-winged Monarch, M. fraters, but this species is paler grey and has mostly black wings and a black tail, and is restricted to far northern Queensland, being a summer breeding migrant from New Guinea. The Spectacled Monarch, M. trivirgatus, has a black face mask that extends across the eyes, has a white lower belly and has a black tail with white tips and under tail.

The Black-faced Monarch is found along the coast of eastern Australia, becoming less common further south.

The Black-faced Monarch is found in rainforests, eucalypt woodlands, coastal scrub and damp gullies. It may be found in more open woodland when migrating.

The Black-faced Monarch forages for insects among foliage, or catches flying insects on the wing.

The Black-faced Monarch builds a deep cup nest of casuarinas needles, bark, roots, moss and spider web in the fork of a tree, about 3 m to 6 m above the ground. Only the female builds the nest, but both sexes incubate the eggs and feed the young.

Black-Faced Monarch