Rawnsley's bowerbird, also known as Rawnsley's satin bird or the blue regent, is a rare

intergeneric hybrid In biology, a hybrid is the offspring resulting from combining the qualities of two organisms of different varieties, subspecies, species or genera through sexual reproduction. Generally, it means that each cell has genetic material from two dif ...

between a

satin bowerbird The satin bowerbird (''Ptilonorhynchus violaceus'') is a species of passerine bird in the bowerbird family Ptilonorhynchidae that is endemic to eastern Australia. It is the only species placed in the genus ''Ptilonorhynchus''. Taxonomy The sati ...

(''Ptilonorhynchus violaceus'') and a

regent bowerbird The regent bowerbird (''Sericulus chrysocephalus'') is a medium-sized, up to 25 cm long, sexually dimorphic bowerbird. The male bird is black with a golden orange-yellow crown, mantle and black-tipped wing feathers. It has yellow bill, black ...

(''Sericulus chrysocephalus'').

Type specimen

It is based on a unique specimen collected by Henry Charles Rawnsley at Witton, near

Brisbane Brisbane ( ; ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and largest city of the States and territories of Australia, state of Queensland and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia, with a ...

Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

, on 14 July 1867. It was described and illustrated (as ''Ptilonorhynchus rawnsleyi'') in the same year by

Silvester Diggles Silvester Diggles (24 January 1817 – 21 March 1880) was an Australian artist and musician of British origin, as well as being a noted amateur ornithologist and entomologist. Biography Diggles was born in Liverpool, Lancashire and married E ...

in Part 15 of his three-volume work '' The Ornithology of Australia''. It has at various times been considered to be a valid bowerbird species, an aberrant individual of the satin bowerbird, or an adult hybrid individual resulting from the natural crossing of a regent bowerbird with a satin bowerbird. The specimen was lost prior to 1950.

Photographs

A second example was not recorded until sightings and photographic evidence of another bird were obtained in November 2003 and January 2004 at Beechmont,

South East Queensland South East Queensland (SEQ) is a Bioregion, bio-geographical, Megalopolis, metropolitan and Statistics, statistical Regions of Queensland, region of the States and territories of Australia, state of Queensland in Australia, with a population of ...

, adjacent to the

Lamington National Park The Lamington National Park is a national park in the McPherson Range on the Queensland/New South Wales border in Australia. From Southport, Queensland, Southport on the Gold Coast, Australia, Gold Coast the park is to the southwest and Brisbane ...

.Blunt & Frith (2004). A further example, a mature male, was photographed in Kalang,

New South Wales New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...

, in 2014, and was identified by reference to its description on

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...

Description

The specimen was described as being in adult male plumage, mainly the glossy blue-black colouring of the adult male satin bowerbird, but with a conspicuous and extensive yellow wing patch, yellow tipping to some tail feathers, with a paler iris colour than the satin bowerbird, and intermediate in size between the two putative parent species.

References

Notes

Sources

* * * * Birds of Queensland Ptilonorhynchidae Bird hybrids Taxa with lost type specimens Birds described in 1867 Intergeneric hybrids {{Passeri-stub