The Diamond Firetail is a brightly coloured finch that occupies eucalypt woodlands, forests and mallee where there is a grassy understorey. Firetails build bottle-shaped nests in trees and bushes, and forage on the ground, largely for grass seeds and other plant material, but also for insects Blakers et al. 1984, Read 1994. 3. The Diamond Firetail has disappeared from parts of its former range and has declined in numbers in many areas. Declines have been recorded on the Cumberland Plain, western Sydney Hoskin 1991; Keast 1995 with a local extinction near Scheyville Egan et al. 1997. On the New England Tableland, declines in populations are apparent Barrett et al. 1994 and the species has become extinct within Imbota Nature Reserve and surrounds H. Ford, pers. comm.. Reid 1999 identified the species as a `decliner` in a review of bird status in the NSW sheep-wheatbelt; and Fisher 1997 predicted that Diamond Firetails would significantly decline from the Bathurst District if current trends in land management persisted.
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