Australia is home to a lot of amazing creatures. Therefore sometimes we might think that some of the creatures are fake. There’s no way that these types of creatures exist in real life. If you see a photo of this amazing robin bird, you’ll probably think that it is edited. Because of this birds’ round pink color body. But this pink robin bird is definitely real and can be found in Australia.
Ever since last September, when there have been a lot of worries about Australia’s natural animal population due to the raging fires, the focus shifted on more recognizable animals such as koalas, kangaroos, or wombats. Even if we searched we couldn’t find many statistics about how these amazing and vibrant bird species have been affected by the fires.
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The Pink Robin it’s just so round!
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Unfortunately, until the fires are all out and the birds that escaped return, it’s hard to estimate losses.
These pink robins nest and breed in the dense vegetation of eucalyptus forests and temperate rainforests. So it seems that there was some damage to their habitats. These birds are classified by the males’ blackheads, a white patch above their beaks and their incredible belly.
Female Australian pink robin birds are more of an olive-brown. And they have only the slightest pink tint to their bellies. They have their little round bodies. So BirdLife Australia describes them as a “Small tubby bird”.
An Instagram photographer @ambikangela is the one who brought this amazing bord to the worldwide audience. So you can see more of their amazing Australian wildlife photos on Instagram.
Pink robins are classified by the males’ black heads, white patch above their beaks, and of course, that incredible belly.
Instagram | @ambikangela
Pink robins can be found on the island of Tasmania, King and Flinders Islands and the wetter parts of Victoria and south eastern New South Wales. This gives the species a massive range of over 20,000 km2. Its favored habitat is a temperate forests or a subtropical or tropical moist lowland forest. The one pre-requisite seems to be that its nesting place must be damp.
Moss thrives in damp places and the pink robin needs it for its nest which it will make in a deep cup shape. It will add feathers and, cleverly, spider webs are used as a binding material. Inside, fine grass and fern serve as a lining on to which a clutch of three or four eggs is laid. The nest can usually be spotted in the fork of a tree and from this vantage point the robins swoop down and catch insects on the ground or in low bushes.
Endemic to the dense, temperate and tropical forests of southeastern Australia, the pink robin (Petroica rodinogaster) is a plump little bird that weighs just 10g. The species displays striking sexual dimorphism – only the males are decorated in that delicious candy hue, framed by a smoky black throat, head, and back. The plumage of the females is far more subdued, but they’re just as adorable.
Pink robins might look very similar to the red-breasted European robin, but they’re barely even related. Along with the beautiful flame robin (Petroica phoenicea) from southeastern Australia and the ridiculously cute and endangered black robin (Petroica traversi) from New Zealand – look at him, he’s got zero neck – the pink robin belongs to a family called Petroicidae, which contains 45 known species.
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It’s not even clear yet how the members of Petroicidae relate to each other. The European robins belong to a family of ‘Old World flycatchers’, called the Muscicapidae.
Australian robins were named after European robins by ornithologists who traveled to Australia at the time of European settlement and decided to call them robins too, despite fundamental genetic and morphological differences between them.
Alliteration aside, the pink robin (Petroica rodinogaster) was named with just a little pre-Victorian chauvinism. It was first so described by a Belgian naturalist Auguste Drapiez in 1819. Yet its nomenclature only describes half the species as the pink robin is sexually dimorphic. While the male does have a pink breast, the female of the species has a rather drab grey-brown plumage. Drapiez decided to call it a robin too, despite the unlikelihood of it being related to the European variety. You can see why.