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List of endemic birds of Australia

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This article is one of a series providing information about endemism among birds in the world's various zoogeographic zones. For an overview of this subject see Endemism in birds.

Patterns of endemism

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Family-level endemism is prominent in Australia. The Australasian biogeographic region has the highest number of endemic families of any zoogeographic region except the Neotropics, and many of these families are endemic to Australia itself — the country therefore stakes a strong claim to be the world's greatest hotspot of bird endemism.

Australian endemic and near-endemic families

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The Australian endemic families are:

  • Emu (Dromaiidae), a well-known monotypic family; the emu is found in rural areas throughout the continent
  • Plains-wanderer (Pedionomidae), a monotypic family; plains-wanderer is restricted to arid inland areas in the southeast of Australia
  • Lyrebirds (Menuridae), two forest-dwelling species of southeast Australia
  • Scrub-birds (Atrichornithidae), two forest-dwelling species, one found in southeastern Australia, the other in southwest Australia
  • Australian mudnesters (Struthideidae), two species found in open forest and woodland environments in eastern Australia
  • Bristlebirds (Dasyornithidae), three species: eastern, western and rufous bristlebirds.
  • Pardalotes (Pardalotidae), four species: spotted, forty-spotted, red-browed and striated pardalote

In addition to the families listed above, the following families are endemic to the Australasian region, with some of their species also found in New Guinea:

A further group of families endemic to the Australasian region, but where the species are predominantly New Guinea endemics are listed in the article on endemic birds of New Guinea.

Endemic Bird Areas

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BirdLife International has defined the following Endemic Bird Areas (EBAs) in Australia:

181 Cape York
182 Queensland wet tropics
183 Eastern Australia
184 South-east Australia
185 Tasmania
186 Southwest Australia
187 North West Australia

Christmas Island, an Australian territory, is also an EBA.

In addition the following are classified as secondary areas (areas with at least one restricted-range bird species, but not meeting the criteria to qualify as EBAs):

To be completed later.

List of species

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The following is a list of bird species endemic to Australia:

Species endemic to coastal eastern Australia

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Species endemic to the Cape York peninsula

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Species endemic to the Queensland wet tropics

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Species endemic to eastern Australia

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Species found in more than one of the above areas, but not elsewhere

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Species endemic to south-eastern Australia

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Many, but some include;

Species endemic to Tasmania

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Species endemic to south-west Australia

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Species endemic to north-west Australia

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The chestnut rail is near-endemic to this region of Australia, elsewhere only being found on the Aru Islands.

Other endemics

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