Oreoicidae, Schoddei & Christidis, 2014

Schoddei, Richard & Christidis, Les, 2014, Relicts from Tertiary Australasia: undescribed families and subfamilies of songbirds (Passeriformes) and their zoogeographic signal, Zootaxa 3786 (5), pp. 501-522 : 507-508

Family Oreoicidae , familia nova ―Australo-Papuan bellbirds

Type genus: Oreoica Gould, 1838

Diagnosis. Small-medium to medium-sized, stout-bodied songbirds with short, rounded to slender, semi-erectile crests that are discolorous or concolorous with the head, and grey to red-brown plumage that lacks spotting or streaking; iris contrastingly erythristic in two of three genera; sexes slightly dimorphic or similar; head rather broad, the bill shrike-like with strong bilateral compression, tomia smooth except for terminal maxillary notch, and narial depression elliptic, with internally semi-perforate to impervious nostrils opening externally in small, round apertures distally in narial depression, rictal bristles coarse but sparse to vestigial; skull with near-imperforate interorbital septum, broadly winged ectethmoids that reach the jugal bar in a broadened foot, a palate with truncated vomerine horns, broad, square-tipped maxillo-palatine processes and broad palatine plate shallowly notched on distal margin, and small, shallow and ill-defined temporal fossae flanked by short simple zygomatic processes projecting anteriorly and distinctively long terete postorbital processes that project ventrally over the zygomatic; sternum short and broad ( Aleadryas ) to rather long and narrow ( Oreoica ), with shallow ( Aleadryas ) to deep ( Oreoica ) keel c. ½–1 x sternum width, lateral trabeculae rather long, c. ⅓–½ x length of sternum, abruptly and moderately flared at tips, sternal rostrum short ( Aleadryas ) to rather long ( Oreoica ); wings rounded to moderately pointed, primaries 10, with p10 short and p7–5 subequal> p4> p 8 in Aleadryas and Ornorectes , and p10 longer and p7> p8=p6> p 5 in Oreoica ; humeral fossae single with deep trabeculated outer fossa and rather shallow incisura capitis in Aleadryas and semi-double with deep incisura capitis in Oreoica , ventral tubercle moderately protuberant, pectoral crest short, hardly decurrent below fossae; tail medium-long, narrow and rounded with 12 acute-tipped rectrices and tail/wing ratio (0.73–)0.75–0.79(–0.81) in Aleadryas and Ornorectes , shorter and squarer with 12 flared, round-tipped rectrices and tail/wing ratio (0.70–)0.72–0.75(–0.77) in Oreoica ; feet stout, with scutellate tarsi. Nest a deep, roughly but compactly interwoven cup of dry fiber, bark strips and rootlets, lined with finer fiber and rootlets, in Aleadryas camouflaged on the outside by draped and interwoven green moss and leafy liverworts ( Coates 1990), and inserted or suspended in upright forks and crotches in small trees c. 1–3 m above the ground. Eggs 2–3 per clutch, broadly ovoid, satin-white, in Aleadryas thinly sprinkled with fine black and some grey spots ( Mayr & Gilliard 1954), in Oreoica thinly sprinkled with coarse spots and small blotches of black and sepia. Forest- and woodland-living insectivores, foraging by hop-searching in litter and bushes; apparently monogamous. All three living species have piping or whistled territorial songs which are distinctively ventriloquial in at least two.

Range and composition. Foothill to mid-montane rainforests of New Guinea, and arid-zone scrubs of Australia; three genera: Aleadryas Iredale, 1956 , of one species: A. rufinucha (Sclater, 1874) , mid montane New Guinea; Ornorectes Iredale, 1956 , of one species: O. cristatus ( Salvadori, 1876) , foothill to lower montane New Guinea; Oreoica Gould, 1838 , of one species: O. gutturalis (Vigors & Horsfield, 1827) , arid Australia.

Group name. Despite the use of “bellbird” as a species name for the New Zealand Bellbird Anthornis melanura , a meliphagid, and for birds outside the Australo-Papuan region (e.g. tropical American Procnias ), we suggest it as a simple and appropriate group name for the members of Oreoicidae . It will maintain the name Crested Bellbird for the most widely known of them, Oreoica gutturalis in Australia. The two New Guinean species could then become Piping, Russet or Brown Bellbird ( Ornorectes cristatus ), after plumage or territorial song, and Rufous-naped Bellbird ( Aleadryas rufinucha ).