''Gerygone'' (), the gerygones or peep-warblers, is a genus of

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...

in the family

Acanthizidae The Acanthizidae—known as Australian warblers—are a family of passerine birds which includes gerygones, the thornbills ''Acanthiza'', and the scrubwrens of ''Sericornis''. The Acanthizidae family consists of small to medium passerine birds, ...

. The genus ranges from

Southeast Asia Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, south-eastern region of Asia, consistin ...

through

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu Hiri Motu, also known as Police Motu, Pidgin Motu, or just Hiri, is a language of Papua New Guinea, which is spoken in surrounding areas of Port Moresby (Capital of Papua New Guinea). It is a simplified version of ...

and

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

and the

Chatham Islands The Chatham Islands ( ) (Moriori: ''Rēkohu'', 'Misty Sun'; mi, Wharekauri) are an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean about east of New Zealand's South Island. They are administered as part of New Zealand. The archipelago consists of about te ...

. Most of the species are found in Australia and New Guinea; only one, the golden-bellied gerygone, has managed to cross

Wallace's Line The Wallace Line or Wallace's Line is a faunal boundary line drawn in 1859 by the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace and named by English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley that separates the biogeographical realms of Asia and Wallacea, a tr ...

and colonise as far as

Thailand Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

and the

Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

. Gerygones are insectivores which obtain most of their food by

gleaning Gleaning is the act of collecting leftover crops from farmers' fields after they have been commercially harvested or on fields where it is not economically profitable to harvest. It is a practice described in the Hebrew Bible that became a legall ...

and snatching in the foliage of trees and bushes. They are small, mostly weighing an average of 6–7 g, and show little variation in size across their range, except for the insular Chatham gerygone, which is nearly twice as large as the rest of the genus. Their songs are described as "simple but delightful", many descending in pitch, and some species are excellent mimics. "Gerygone" means "born of sound" (Magrath 2003). The genus contains 20 species including one which is now extinct: * Brown gerygone, ''Gerygone mouki'' *

Grey gerygone The grey warbler (''Gerygone igata''), also known by its Māori name or outside New Zealand as the grey gerygone, is an insectivorous bird in the family Acanthizidae endemic to New Zealand. Its natural habitat is temperate forests. It is sometim ...

, ''Gerygone igata'' * Norfolk gerygone, ''Gerygone modesta'' *†

Lord Howe gerygone The Lord Howe gerygone or Lord Howe gerygone flyeater (''Gerygone insularis'') was a small bird in the family (biology), family Acanthizidae, brown and greyish in color. Its head was brown apart from a pale grey eye-ring and a grey throat and ch ...

, ''Gerygone insularis'' –

extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

(c.1930) * Chatham gerygone, ''Gerygone albofrontata'' *

Fan-tailed gerygone The fan-tailed gerygone (''Gerygone flavolateralis'') is a species of bird in the family Acanthizidae. It is found in New Caledonia and Vanuatu. The Rennell gerygone (''G. citrina'') of the Solomon Islands Solomon Islands is an island ...

, ''Gerygone flavolateralis'' *

Rennell gerygone The Rennell gerygone (''Gerygone citrina'') is a species of bird in the family Acanthizidae. It is found on Rennell Island. It was formerly considered a subspecies of the fan-tailed gerygone (''Gerygone flavolateralis''), but was split as a dist ...

, ''Gerygone citrina'' – split from ''G. flavolateralis'' * Brown-breasted gerygone, ''Gerygone ruficollis'' * Golden-bellied gerygone, ''Gerygone sulphurea'' * Rufous-sided gerygone, ''Gerygone dorsalis'' *

Mangrove gerygone The mangrove gerygone (''Gerygone levigaster'') is a species of bird in the Australian warbler family Acanthizidae. The species is also known as the mangrove warbler. The species is thought to form a superspecies with the closely related fan-tai ...

, ''Gerygone levigaster'' * Plain gerygone, ''Gerygone inornata'' * Western gerygone, ''Gerygone fusca'' *

Dusky gerygone The dusky gerygone (''Gerygone tenebrosa'') is a species of bird in the family Acanthizidae. It is endemic to coastal central and northern areas of Western Australia. Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical mangrove forest A fores ...

, ''Gerygone tenebrosa'' *

Large-billed gerygone The large-billed gerygone (''Gerygone magnirostris'') is a species of bird in the family Acanthizidae found in northern Australia and New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's secon ...

, ''Gerygone magnirostris'' * Biak gerygone, ''Gerygone hypoxantha'' – previous a subspecies of ''G. magnirostris'' * Yellow-bellied gerygone, ''Gerygone chrysogaster'' * Green-backed gerygone, ''Gerygone chloronota'' * White-throated gerygone, ''Gerygone olivacea'' *

Fairy gerygone The fairy gerygone (''Gerygone palpebrosa''), previously known as the fairy warbler, is a species of bird in the family Acanthizidae native to New Guinea and Queensland. Taxonomy Alfred Russel Wallace described the species as ''Gerygone palpebro ...

, ''Gerygone palpebrosa''

References

* Del Hoyo, J.; Elliot, A. & Christie D. (editors). (2006). Handbook of the Birds of the World. Volume 12: Picathartes to Tits and Chickadees. Lynx Edicions. *Keast, A. & Recher, H. (1997) "The adaptive zone of the genus ''Gerygone'' (Acanthizidae) as shown by morphology and feeding habits." ''Emu'' 97(1): 1-17 *

External links

Bird genera Taxonomy articles created by Polbot {{Acanthizidae-stub