Utupua whistler
species of bird

The Utupua whistler (Pachycephala utupuae) is a passerine bird in the family Pachycephalidae that is endemic to the island of Utupua in the Santa Cruz Islands of the western Pacific Ocean. It was formerly treated as a subspecies of the Vanikoro whistler. Prior to the split the combined species were known by the English name "Temotu whistler".
Taxonomy
The Utupua whistler was formally described in 1932 by the American ornithologist Ernst Mayr based on specimens collected during the Whitney South Sea Expedition to the small island of Utupua in the Santa Cruz Islands. These islands form part of the Solomon Islands in the Pacific Ocean. Mayr considered his specimens to be a subspecies of what is now the Australian golden whistler and coined the trinomial name Pachycephala pectoralis utupuae. The Utupua whistler was previously considered to be a subspecies of the Vanikoro whistler (Pachycephala vanikorensis) but is now classified as a separate species based the striking differences in female plumage. The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.
“Utupua whistler” enters the record as species of bird. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Utupua, whistler and species can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 21, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q129622511. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1932.
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This entry incorporates text from “Utupua whistler” 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.