Purple-backed Fairy-Wren (photo by Gail Bryant)
It is not uncommon for ornithologists to change the name of a species. For example, Richard’s Pipit is now known as an Australasian Pipit and a Purple Swamphen is now known as an Australasian Swamphen. This doesn’t seem to worry many people who continue to use common names such as Pink and Greys when referring to Galahs, etc. Also many species have subspecies and when the research dictates these subspecies are split into separate species with their own individual name. This happened recently to the Variegated Fairy-Wren.
To the east of the Great Dividing Range, to just north of Brisbane, the species has the same name
Variegated Fairy-Wren
Variegated Fairy-Wren
but to the west of the Range it is now known as Purple-backed Fairy-Wren.
Purple-backed Fairy-Wren
Purple-backed Fairy-Wren
Can you pick the difference? Well the Purple-backed always has ear-tufts that are paler than the top of its head and the back of the bird has a purple fringe across the mantle. The Variegated Fairy-Wren often has a greyish cap. Admittedly there is not a lot of difference as you would expect, since they were all called Variegated for a very long time.
Anyway, after looking at all my video, I was able to put together a minute of each species and I didn’t have to travel 1km. That’s 495 now.