Grey Currawong - Taxonomy and Naming

Taxonomy and Naming

The Grey Currawong was first described as Corvus versicolor by ornithologist John Latham in 1801, who gave it the common name of 'Variable Crow'. The specific name versicolor means 'of variable colours' in Latin. Other old common names include Grey Crow-shrike, Leaden Crow-shrike, Mountain Magpie, Black-winged Currawong (in western Victoria), Clinking Currawong (in Tasmania), and Squeaker (in Western Australia). The Black-winged Currawong was known to the Ramindjeri people of Encounter Bay as Wati-eri, the word meaning "to sneak" or "to track". Kiling-kildi was a name derived from the call used by the people of the lower Murray River.

Together with the Pied Currawong (S. graculina) and Black Currawong (S. fuliginosa), the Grey Currawong forms the genus Strepera. Although crow-like in appearance and habits, currawongs are only distantly related to true crows, and are instead closely related to the Australian Magpie and the butcherbirds. The affinities of all three genera were recognised early on and they were placed in the family Cracticidae in 1914 by ornithologist John Albert Leach after he had studied their musculature. Ornithologists Charles Sibley and Jon Ahlquist recognised the close relationship between the woodswallows and the butcherbirds and relatives in 1985, and combined them into a Cracticini clade, which later became the family Artamidae.