Blue-breasted Fairywren

1. Breeding males show a blue crown and upper back, dark blue throat, and chestnut shoulders.

2. Females have grey-brown upperparts, off-white underparts, and reddish-brown lores and eye-ring.

3. All birds have a long blue-grey tail, typically held cocked, and are often seen moving low in dense cover.

These wrens live in small groups, often consisting of a breeding pair and their offspring. The breeding season runs from August to November, with females building dome-shaped nests low in shrubs. Clutch size averages two to three eggs. Both parents and sometimes other group members feed the nestlings. Their diet consists mainly of insects and other small invertebrates, foraged from the ground and low vegetation. Habitat loss due to agricultural clearing is a significant threat, especially in the Western Australian Wheatbelt, where populations are declining in fragmented landscapes.

Blue-breasted Fairy-wrens inhabit low, dense vegetation from southwestern Western Australia to the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia. They prefer sandplain heath, mallee scrub, and woodland with thick understory. They are most often detected by their soft, reed-like contact calls or churring alarm notes, and are usually observed in small groups close to the ground