page_title: Magpie-lark
section_title: Breeding
hierarchical_section_title: Magpie-lark / Behaviour and ecology / Breeding
caption_attribution_description: Australian Magpie-Lark Grallina cyanoleuca chicks
context_page_description: The magpie-lark, also known as the peewee, peewit or mudlark, is a passerine bird native to Australia, Timor and southern New Guinea. The male and female both have black and white plumage, though with different patterns. John Latham described the species in 1801. Long thought to be a member of the mudnest builder family Corcoracidae, it has been reclassified in the family Monarchidae. Two subspecies are recognized.
context_section_description: Birds generally pair for life (though divorce is not unknown) and defend a territory together. The nest is round, about 150 mm in diameter with vertical sides and is usually placed on a flat branch somewhere near water or on a horizontal beam of a telephone pole. It is made of grass and plant material thickly plastered together with mud, and generously lined with grass, feathers and fur.  Breeding is opportunistic, usually from August to February in the fertile south, anytime after rain in drier areas, and multiple broods are common when conditions allow. Both parents incubate a clutch of between three and five eggs. Incubation of eggs takes up to eighteen days, and the young birds fledge about three weeks after hatching. It is quite common for only some of the chicks to survive because sometimes the nest is not big enough for all of the baby birds, therefore one baby will sometimes push another out of the nest and it is most likely that the chick will not survive the fall.
caption: Two chicks in a mud nest
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