Magpie-lark
species of bird
The magpie-lark (Grallina cyanoleuca), also known as wee magpie, peewee, peewit, mudlark or Murray magpie, 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 (the monarch flycatchers). Two subspecies are recognized.
Taxonomy and systematics
The magpie-lark was originally described by the English ornithologist John Latham in the genus Corvus in 1801 (as Corvus cyanoleucus). Its species name is derived from the Ancient Greek words cyanos "dark blue" and leukos "white" despite the black and white plumage. However, there can be a bluish sheen to the black back. In the same publication, Latham described the same species as Gracula picata. In 1843, Hugh Edwin Strickland proposed using the second name as it was the more accurate, resulting in Grallina picata.
“Magpie-lark” enters the record as species of bird. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Magpie-lark, species and bird can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1190650. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1801 and 1843.
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This entry incorporates text from “Magpie-lark” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.