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Western whipbird

index of animals with the same common name

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 14, 2026
Entity authorityQ55644590
Source-derived summary

The western whipbird (Psophodes nigrogularis) is a passerine bird found in several scattered populations in Southwest Australia. It is predominantly olive green in colour. The western whipbird has sometimes been split into two species: the black-throated whipbird and the white-bellied whipbird.

Taxonomy

The western whipbird was formally described in 1844 by the English ornithologist John Gould based on a specimen collected by John Gilbert in the Wongan Hills of Western Australia. Gould coined the current binomial name Psophodes nigrogularis. The specific epithet combines the Latin niger meaning "black" with Modern Latin gularis meaning "throated".

Four subspecies are recognised:

P. n. nigrogularis Gould, 1844 – Two Peoples Bay, far southwest South Australia: (Endangered) The western heath subspecies is now restricted to a small patch east of Albany, having disappeared from large parts of its range due to land clearance.

P. n. oberon Schodde & Mason, IJ, 1991 – southwest Western Australia, east of Two Peoples Bay: (Rare) The western mallee subspecies is found in scattered populations between the Stirling Ranges and Ravensthorpe.

Editorial summary

“Western whipbird” enters the record as index of animals with the same common name. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Western, whipbird and index can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1844, 1991—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Western, whipbird and index.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Western whipbird” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Western, whipbird and index provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q55644590. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1844 and 1991.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Western whipbird” 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.