page_title: Black currawong
section_title: Feeding
hierarchical_section_title: Black currawong / Behavior / Feeding
caption_attribution_description: Black Currawong (Strepera fuliginosa)
context_page_description: The black currawong, also known locally as the black jay, is a large passerine bird endemic to Tasmania and the nearby islands within the Bass Strait. One of three currawong species in the genus Strepera, it is closely related to the butcherbirds and Australian magpie within the family Artamidae. It is a large crow-like bird, around 50 cm long on average, with yellow irises, a heavy bill, and black plumage with white wing patches. The male and female are similar in appearance. Three subspecies are recognised, one of which, Strepera fuliginosa colei of King Island, is vulnerable to extinction.
  Within its range, the black currawong is generally sedentary, although populations at higher altitudes relocate to lower areas during the cooler months. The habitat includes densely forested areas as well as alpine heathland. It is rare below altitudes of 200 m. Omnivorous, its diet includes a variety of berries, invertebrates, and small vertebrates. Less arboreal than the pied currawong, the black currawong spends more time foraging on the ground. It roosts and breeds in trees.
context_section_description: No systematic studies have been done on the diet of the black currawong, but it is known to be omnivorous, feeding on a wide variety of foodstuffs including insects and small vertebrates, carrion, and berries. Birds forage on the ground most often, but also in tree canopies. They use their bills to probe the ground or turn over clods of earth or small rocks looking for food. Birds have been seen using walking tracks to forage along. A group of ten birds were observed trying to break open ice on a frozen lake. They have been recorded foraging along the beach for fly larvae in beached kelp. Most commonly, black currawongs forage in pairs, but they may congregate in larger groups—flocks of 100 birds have descended on orchards to eat apples or rotten fruit. The species has been observed in a mixed-species flocks with forest ravens (Corvus tasmanicus), and silver gulls (Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae), white-faced herons (Egretta novaehollandiae), white-fronted chats (Epthianura albifrons), and European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) on the beach at Sundown Point. They have been observed securing dead larger prey to ease subsequent dismemberment; a parent currawong had wedged a dead chicken's wings under a log to facilitate pulling off portions such as legs and entrails to feed to its young, and another time hooked a dead rabbit on a spur of a log to rip it into pieces.
  The black currawong consumes the berries of the heath species Leptecophylla juniperina, and Astroloma humifusum, and the native sedge Gahnia grandis, as well as domestic pea, and apples. Invertebrates consumed include earthworms (Lumbricidae) and many types of insects, such as ants, moths, flies, crickets, grasshoppers and beetles like weevils, scarabs and leaf beetles. It is adaptable, and has learnt to eat the introduced European wasp (Vespula germanica). A bird that was being harassed by three scarlet robins (Petroica boodang) was seen to suddenly turn on them and catch and eat one. Other vertebrates recorded as prey include the house mouse (Mus musculus), small lizards, tadpoles, chickens, ducklings, the young of domestic turkey, Tasmanian nativehen (Gallinula mortierii), flame robin (Petroica phoenicea) and rabbit.
  It can become quite bold and tame, much like its close relative, the pied currawong on the Australian mainland, especially in public parks and gardens where people make a habit of feeding it. Black currawongs have been recorded taking young peas from pods, raiding orchards, seizing chickens from poultry yards, and entering barns in search of mice.
  Black currawongs are very common around picnic areas in Tasmania's two most popular National Parks, Freycinet and Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair, and are often fed by tourists there. The National Parks Authority tolerated this practice until 1995, when they found the birds were becoming a nuisance and began discouraging people from feeding wildlife. However, the agile currawongs are adept at snatching fragments of food left by picnickers so the birds may only ultimately be discouraged by an (impractical) ban on food in National Parks. Birds also take other items such as soap or cutlery from campsites to examine.
caption: Black currawong, Fortescue Bay, Tasman Peninsula
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