#weebill

Bird Support

Laughing Kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae)

"This bird encourages you to laugh back at them. Who doesn't need more of that in their life?"

"They're beautiful. They're loud enough to wake the dead. They're canonically gay, seriously, look up the original version of 'kookaburra sitting in the old gum tree'"

"These guys are probably one of the biggest reason I fell in love with birds - all thanks to the friendly family of kookaburras that lived near my grandfather's place."

"It has a very distinctive laugh. It’s weirdly everywhere, go to a park and the chances of finding it are like 30% on a given day. Also iconic."

"Is there any bird more iconic to Australia than the Laughing Kookaburra? Their distinctive laughing call makes me feel at home. Also, one did once steal a chicken drumstick out of my uncle's hand (just swooped down and snatched it), which is also iconic behaviour."

Weebill (Smicrornis brevirostris)

"Absolute truth in advertising, they are so wee! Really just ridiculously tiny."

Remarkably tiny bird with very short, stubby bill. Upperparts gray-brown, underparts variably cream and yellow, with pale eyebrow and pale eye. Inhabits dry, open woodlands, especially eucalypt forests. Very vocal as it forages in trees, where it feeds primarily on insects, sometimes in mixed flocks with thornbills and pardalotes. Distinctive loud song, given year-round, often rendered “I’m a wee-bill!” (eBird)

weebill :]

Australia's smallest bird: the weebill!

Smicrornis brevirostris, which means small bird (Greek) short beak (Latin).

First Sighting. Weebill

(On my travels)

Bird Info & Submission Reasons

Bell Miner (Manorina melanophrys)

"I can't think of the local bushland where I grew up without remembering the sounds of bell miners plinking in the air."

A medium to large honeyeater that is bright olive green overall with a orange-yellow bill, legs, and cheek. Lives in large colonies where they are aggressive and territorial. Distributed around southeastern coasts and in dense wetter eucalypt forests. Their main call is a loud "tink" (hence the name), although they also make other short, sharp sounds. (eBird)

Weebill (Smicrornis brevirostris)

"Absolute truth in advertising, they are so wee! Really just ridiculously tiny."

Remarkably tiny bird with very short, stubby bill. Upperparts gray-brown, underparts variably cream and yellow, with pale eyebrow and pale eye. Inhabits dry, open woodlands, especially eucalypt forests. Very vocal as it forages in trees, where it feeds primarily on insects, sometimes in mixed flocks with thornbills and pardalotes. Distinctive loud song, given year-round, often rendered “I’m a wee-bill!” (eBird)

A new variant has been added!

Weebill (Smicrornis brevirostris) © Patrick Kavanagh

It hatches from brown, distinctive, dry, loud, open, pale, short, stubby, tiny, vocal, wee, and yellow eggs.

A new variant has been added!

Weebill (Smicrornis brevirostris) © Duncan McCaskill

It hatches from brown, distinctive, dry, loud, open, pale, short, stubby, tiny, vocal, wee, and yellow eggs.

However. I've noticed something kind of interesting in one of the native birds in my local area.

So, the Weebill is one of the birds that I saw today, and at first I didn't really know what kind of bird I was looking at, I simply committed the appearance to memory and then when I got home me and my mum (who knows way more about birds than I do) did some research to figure out the bird's common name as my mum already knew what bird I was talking about, but my mum called it a Weetit rather than a Weebill and couldn't find anything about Weetits (lmao) but we eventually figure it out. I wanted to learn more about Weebills, because when I saw the birdies on my walk they seemed so severely tiny that I couldn't believe that birds could even get that small. They were certainly smaller than the Superb Fairy Wrens, the only other seriously small bird in my local area (probably the second smallest).

Now, the Weebills are the smallest bird in Australia, so it should be no surprise that are are really tiny, but when I decided to look up more information about the Weebills so I could get an exact size in cm, all of the sources I could find stated that the Weebill was about 8-9 cm, from the tip of the beak, to the tip of the tail. The moment that both myself and my mum read that, we thought, there is no way there are 8-9 cm, because the Weebills we've seen are much smaller than that. Like, if I were to guess the size of the Weebills in our area, I would say they are maybe 5-6 cm, maybe 6-7 cm if I was being really generous. But definitely not 8-9 cm.

Now, I know a few cm difference seems like not a big deal, and for larger birds it really isn't, but the smallest bird in Australia? 5-6cm to 8-9cm is a pretty big size difference. And I wonder if perhaps the Weebills in my local area are smaller than expected? I know that the bird I got a very good look at was not a juvenile, as all the Weebills I saw were the same size, so they must have all been adults.

As I wrote in my bird journal, I can see such a tiny little bird's size being overlooked in certain places of Australia, especially my rural town where there is probably not a single bird researcher in my area at all. Like, I don't think most people in my town really even see the tiny little birds very often, and if they do, probably mis-identify it as a Superb Fairy Wren or the invasive Sparrow. But I feel like the Weebills of my area have to be smaller than 8-9 cm, and I wish there were more avid bird watchers in my town that could help me out because there could be a case here for the Weebills in my local area (my town and the towns surrounding it) being perhaps smaller than the officially recorded size.