Birds Guide

Dicruridae
Restless Flycatcher
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia   Phylum: Chordata   Class: Aves   Order: Passeriformes   Family: Dicruridae
Subfamilies
Monarchinae Rhipidurinae Dicrurinae

The family Dicruridae is a relatively recent grouping of a number of seemingly very different birds, mostly from the southern hemisphere, which are more closely related than they at first appear.

Many of the 139 species making up the family were previously assigned to other groups, largely on the basis of general morphology or behaviour. The Magpie-lark, for example, was assigned to the same family as the White-winged Chough: both build unusual nests from mud rather than vegetable matter. The Australasian fantails were thought to be allied with the fantails of the northern hemisphere (both groups share a similar diet and behaviour), and so on.

With the new insights generated by the DNA-DNA hybridisation studies of Sibley and his co-workers toward the end of the 20th century, however, it became clear that these apparently unrelated birds were all descended from a common ancestor: the same crow-like ancestor that gave rise to the drongos.

Subfamilies of Dicruridae

• Subfamily Monarchinae: boatbills, monarch flycatchers, Magpie-lark
  Subfamily Rhipidurinae:fantails
  Subfamily Dicrurinae:drongos

External links

• Dicruridae videos on the Internet Bird Collection