Piping shrike

The badge on the Flag of South Australia depicts the rising sun, and a Piping Shrike standing on a branch of a gum tree.^[1][2] The Piping Shrike is more commonly known as a White-backed Magpie.^[3][4][5][2]

The Piping Shrike is sometimes mistakenly associated with the Magpie-lark, also known as the Murray Magpie, Pee Wee and Mudlark. This confusion came about because it is not obvious that the image depicts the back of the bird. The South Australian Governor used the term Piping Shrike for the White-backed Magpie in correspondence, and wrote the words "Australian piping shrike" on the back of drawing proposals of the bird for the State badge of South Australia in the early 1900s.^[4]

The name Piping Shrike is closely linked to the early name for the Australian magpie. From the early 1800s, the name Piping Crow Shrike was used for the Black-backed Magpie, which is the nominate race of the Australian Magpie in today's taxonomies. The name that was used for the White-backed Magpie, the Piping Shrike on the State Badge, was the White Backed Crow Shrike.^[6] Both are in the same species (Australian Magpie) in today's taxonomies. A review of newspaper articles from the early 1900s, and the South Australian Bird Protection Act of 1900,^[7] show that people were grouping both Black-backed Magpies and White-backed Magpies under the general name “Piping Crow Shrikes”.^[8] The Latin name for the White-backed Magpie is Gymnorhina tibicen telonocua. Tibicen relates to piping or piper, hence the name Piping Shrike.^[9]