Buff-sided Robin

The buff-sided robin occurs in suitable habitat within northern coastal drainage basins from the Kimberley region of north-west Western Australia, the Top End of the Northern Territory to the north-western Gulf of Carpentaria in Queensland. In Western Australia, the buff-sided robin occurs within the Central Kimberley, Northern Kimberley and Ord Victoria Plain IBRA Bioregions with scattered records from King Edward River, Prince Regent River, Wunaamin Miliwundi Ranges, Drysdale River/Kalumburu, Mitchell River, Mitchell Plateau, Fitzroy River, Geikie Gorge, Pentecost River, Wyndham and Kununurra. In the Northern Territory, the buff-sided robin occurs within the Victoria Bonaparte, Darwin Coastal, Arnhem Coast, Pine Creek, Daly Basin, Gulf Coastal, and Gulf Fall and Uplands IBRA Bioregions. In the western Northern Territory, the range of the buff-sided robin extends from the Western Australian border to Kakadu National Park within the Keep River, Victoria River, Fitzmaurice River, Moyle River, Daly River, Darwin River, Finniss River, Adelaide River, Mary River, Wildman River, West Alligator River and East Alligator River catchments. It is absent from eastern Arnhem Land, but occurs in eastern Northern Territory within the Roper River, Limmen Bight River, McArthur River, Robinson River, Calvert River and Settlement Creek drainage basins. In north-west Queensland, the buff-sided robin occurs in the Gulf Plains IBRA Bioregion, with all known records located within the Settlement Creek and Nicholson River drainage basins. Within these catchments, populations are known from the Gregory River, Nicholson River, Boodjamulla (Lawn Hill) National Park and Lagoon Creek (Westmoreland Gorge). The buff-sided robin is largely confined to dense riparian vegetation, and subcoastal and sandstone monsoon vine-thickets. At riparian sites, it prefers thickets of freshwater mangrove, pandanus, and bamboo. The core riparian forest habitat of the buff-sided robin is characterised by canopy and sub-canopy trees, including Melaleuca leucadendra, Nauclea orientalis, Ficus, Terminalia, Pandanus aquaticus, and Barringtonia acutangula. Buff-sided robins are strongly associated with these dense, closed canopy, vegetation communities, rarely venturing into adjacent drier and more open forest types. Buff-sided robins have been reported occasionally from tidally influenced mangrove communities near the coast. Observations of the habitat of the buff-sided robin were provided by Elsey, who described it as living in "mangroves" on the Victoria River, a reference to the freshwater mangrove (Barringtonia acutangula) that occurs on the lower banks of freshwater reaches of rivers in the region. Whitlock confirmed Elsey's habitat observations on the Victoria River, reporting that the buff-sided robin was "...one of the most attractive inhabitants of the river forests, to which it seemed to be almost exclusively confined", and that it "...favoured thickets of freshwater mangroves". Hill described the buff-sided robin on the McArthur River (Gulf of Carpentaria) as being "Found in thick scrub and timber in sheltered localities, generally near water". Barnard described it as "...common along the water-courses and in the brush growing at the foot of the sandstone bluffs" in the McArthur River catchment, the latter comment referring to dry monsoon vine-thickets associated with sandstone escarpments. At the eastern extremity of its range on the Gregory River (north-western Queensland), the buff-sided robin was reported by McClennan to occur in riverine habitat and "...when disturbed makes for the pandanus growing along the river-banks, where it is usually to be found at other times, and in which it doubtless nests."

The buff-sided robin is listed as least concern by the IUCN (2012.1), and is listed as near threatened in the Northern Territory.