Striated Pardalote
Pardalotus striatus
Despite being tree-dwelling birds, they often nest underground, excavation-style, digging horizontal tunnels up to a meter long into earth banks.
- Scientific name
- Pardalotus striatus
- Taxonomy
- Animalia › Chordata › Aves › Passeriformes › Pardalotidae › Pardalotus
- IUCN Red List status
- Least Concern
- Population trend
- stable
- Biome
- forest
- Habitat
- Eucalypt forests, woodlands, and paperbark forests, occasionally visiting urban parks and gardens.
- Diet
- Primarily foliage-dwelling insects, especially psyllids and their sugary, protective secretions known as lerps.
- Range
- Australia
- Size
- 9 to 11 cm in length, weighing approximately 10 to 14 grams
- Lifespan
- 4 to 6 years
- Active
- diurnal
- Threats
- Habitat fragmentation, loss of mature trees containing nesting hollows, and competition for nest sites with larger introduced species.
- Safe to approach?
- Completely harmless. These birds are active and busy, best observed with binoculars high in the branches. If you find a nesting tunnel in a clay bank, maintain a respectful distance of at least 10 meters to avoid causing the parents to abandon their clutch.
The striated pardalote ( Pardalotus striatus ) is the least colourful and most common of the four pardalote species. Other common names include pickwick , wittachew and chip-chip . It is a very small, short-tailed bird that is more often heard than seen, foraging noisily for lerps and other small creatures in the treetops.
Photo: Lucas Christofides, CC-BY, via iNaturalist
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