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The mallee emu-wren is an average 16.5 centimetres (6.5 inches) from head to tail. [8] The adult male mallee emu-wren has olive-brown upperparts with dark streaks, and a pale rufous unstreaked crown, and grey-brown wings. It has a sky blue throat, upper chest, lores, and ear coverts.
The common name of the genus is derived from the resemblance of their tails to the feathers of an emu. [2] The genus was defined by French naturalist René Lesson in 1831 after his visit to Port Jackson on the 1823-5 voyage of the Coquille, although the southern emu-wren had already been encountered and described soon after European settlement at Sydney Cove. [3]
The site has been identified by BirdLife International as an Important Bird Area (IBA) because it supports populations of globally threatened malleefowl, black-eared miners and mallee emu-wren, as well as red-lored whistlers, regent parrots and purple-gaped honeyeaters.
Over 200 bird species have been recorded in the park, which is overlapped by the Murray-Sunset, Hattah and Annuello Important Bird Area (IBA), so identified by BirdLife International because it contains mallee habitat supporting a suite of threatened mallee bird, including the malleefowl, black-eared miner and mallee emu-wren. [10]
The Murray-Sunset National Park is the second largest national park in Victoria, Australia, located in the Mallee district in the northwestern corner of the state, bordering South Australia. The 633,000-hectare (1,560,000-acre) national park is situated approximately 440 kilometres (270 mi) northwest of Melbourne and was proclaimed in 1991. [2]
The endangered Mallee Emu-wren (Stipiturus mallee), endemic to the Murray-Mallee, relies entirely on the species for hunting, nesting, mating, foraging and breeding and rarely disperses out of the hummocks. [17] Additionally, very high lizard diversity and abundance is associated with T. scariosa. [12] [20]
In the late 1960s, morphological studies began to suggest that the Australo-Papuan fairywrens, the grasswrens, emu-wrens and two monotypic wren-like genera from New Guinea were related and, following Charles Sibley's pioneering work on egg-white proteins in the mid-1970s, Australian researchers adopted the family name Maluridae in 1975. [1]
Southern emu-wren, Stipiturus malachurus - Aus; Mallee emu-wren, Stipiturus mallee - Aus; Rufous-crowned emu-wren, Stipiturus ruficeps - Aus; Grey grasswren, Amytornis barbatus - Aus; Black grasswren, Amytornis housei - Aus; White-throated grasswren, Amytornis woodwardi - Aus; Carpentarian grasswren, Amytornis dorotheae - Aus