Current view: Data table and detailed info
Taxonomic source(s)
Christidis, L. and Boles, W.E. 2008. Systematics and Taxonomy of Australian Birds. CSIRO Publishing, Collingwood, Australia.
del Hoyo, J., Collar, N.J., Christie, D.A., Elliott, A., Fishpool, L.D.C., Boesman, P. and Kirwan, G.M. 2016. HBW and BirdLife International Illustrated Checklist of the Birds of the World. Volume 2: Passerines. Lynx Edicions and BirdLife International, Barcelona, Spain and Cambridge, UK.
IUCN Red List criteria met and history
Red List criteria met
Red List history
| Migratory status |
not a migrant |
Forest dependency |
medium |
| Land-mass type |
|
Average mass |
- |
Population justification: The abundance of Tooth-billed Bowerbirds was calculated from the density and distribution of birds and the area of climatically suitable habitat at different altitudes (Williams et al. 2010a).
Trend justification: There is much uncertainty with the rate of decline in this species. Annual monitoring between 2000 and 2016 (at 1,970 plots at 62 different locations, spanning 0-1,500 m altitude) detected a highly significant rapid decline from 460,000 to 20,000 mature individuals (equivalent to a >95% decline over three generations [25.8 years; Bird et al. 2020]) at both mid- and high-altitude sites. Similarly, reporting rates for 2-ha 20-min surveys declined by 51% from 1999–2018, again with most of the decline in the first ten years (BirdLife Australia 2020). There was also a significant decline in reporting rate of 30%–42% between the first BirdLife Australia Atlas (1977–1981) and the second (1998–2001; Barrett et al. 2002, Garnett et al. 2003). However, many of these reductions are attributable to Cyclones Larry (2006) and Yasi (2011) which severely damaged many court sites, probably killed many birds, and diminished the frequency of calls, and thus detection rates for many years afterwards - declines caused by these events are considered temporary and there were signs of recovery post 2008 in the data. Moreover, there was little change in the reporting rates from 500-m radius area searches from 1999–2018 (BirdLife Australia 2020), no difference between 2000–2007 and 2013–2019 in the proportion of weeks in which the species was recorded (from 33% and 34%) at the School for Field Studies Centre near Danbulla (740–780 m; A. Freeman, M. Craig unpublished, in Williams et al. 2021) and visits within the last five years to almost all known historic locations found none had been vacated. Evaluating all trends over the past three generations, Williams et al. (2021) concluded that the population is suspected to have declined at a rate of 20-29% over the past three generations, principally because of climate change, which is reducing population sizes in a large number of Wet Tropics species (William and de la Fuente 2021). Given the ongoing nature of this threat, the population is suspected to decline at a similar rate in the future, although there are many uncertainties with these estimations.
Country/territory distribution
Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBA)
Recommended citation
BirdLife International (2024) Species factsheet: Tooth-billed Bowerbird Scenopoeetes dentirostris. Downloaded from
https://datazone.birdlife.org/species/factsheet/tooth-billed-bowerbird-scenopoeetes-dentirostris on 22/11/2024.
Recommended citation for factsheets for more than one species: BirdLife International (2024) IUCN Red List for birds. Downloaded from
https://datazone.birdlife.org/species/search on 22/11/2024.
