Pachycephala


Pachycephala is a genus of birds native to Oceania and Southeast Asia. They are commonly known as typical whistlers. Older guidebooks may refer to them as thickheads, a literal translation of the genus name, which is derived from Ancient Greek παχύς, meaning "thick", and κεφαλή, meaning "head". This lineage originated in Australo-Papua and later colonized the
Indonesian and Philippine archipelagos to the west and the Pacific archipelagos to the east.

Taxonomy

The genus Pachycephala was introduced in 1825 by the Irish zoologist Nicholas Vigors with the Australian golden whistler as the type species. The name is derived from Ancient Greek παχύς, meaning "thick", and κεφαλή, meaning "head".
There have been big changes to the species limits in the genus Pachycephala. In 2007 Walter Boles in the Handbook of the Birds of the World recognised 21 species in the genus but in 2025 AviList recognised 51 species.
The genus contains 51 species:

Former species

Formerly, some authorities also considered the following species as species within the genus Pachycephala:
An unidentified Pachycephala whistler was heard on May 14, 1994 at 1,000 meters ASL south of the summit of Camiguin in the Philippines, where the genus was not previously known to occur. It might have been an undescribed taxon, or simply a vagrant of a known species.