Southern Whiteface (Aphelocephala leucopsis)
Photo: Trevor Rix
Description
- The Southern Whiteface is a small, stocky bird with grey-brown feathers and white underparts.
- It has a black band with white tips on its tail and a white forehead with a black edge.
- Adult males and females look the same, but juveniles don’t have the black band on their face.
- Adults are 11 cm and weigh 12 g on average.
- It breeds from July to December, laying 2-5 eggs.
- It builds messy, dome-shaped nests made of grass and bark into hollow trees, crevices or in dense shrubs.
- It feeds in small groups on the ground, eating insects, spiders, and seeds.
- It is often found in mixed species flocks amongst thornbill and other whiteface species.
Find out more about the Southern Whiteface on Canberra NatureMapr.
Where to find them
The Southern Whiteface lives in areas that have:
- undisturbed open woodlands and shrublands with understorey grasses or shrubs
- few trees and herbaceous litter cover important for foraging
- hollow-bearing trees for roosting and nesting.
More specifically:
- the Southern Whiteface is found across the Australian mainland south of the Tropic of Capricorn
- the South-east Southern Whiteface lives in the ACT region and from southeastern and central Australia
- the South-west Southern Whiteface is found in Western Australia.
Conservation threats
Threats to the Southern Whiteface include:
- habitat loss and destruction, which breaks up and damages the habitat
- over-grazing by livestock
- frequent and longer droughts
- increasing extreme events such as wildfires and heatwaves.
Conservation status
- International – Vulnerable (International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List).
- National – Vulnerable (Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999).
- Australian Capital Territory – Vulnerable (Nature Conservation Act 2014).
Conservation actions
Conservation aims to protect the habitat of the Southern Whiteface, including to:
- find and protect woodland and grassland that the species lives in
- create connections between habitat patches
- manage land to prevent overgrazing
- protect hollow-bearing trees
- monitor the species over time to see if conservation efforts are working
- increase knowledge on the species’ population, breeding, and movement
- use climate models to understand how climate change might affect the species and its habitat
- raise awareness and encourage local and Indigenous conservation actions.