Red-billed Firefinch

Lagonosticta senegala

The combination of a red bill, yellow-green eye-ring, and brown (not black) undertail are characteristic of this firefinch. The male has a pink face, crown, and underparts, while the female is mostly brown with a small pink patch between the eye and bill and a pink upper tail. Pairs and small flocks are resident in a variety of grassy savanna habitats and in cultivation, where they feed on the ground for seeds and fly into trees when disturbed. The species may join mixed-species flocks and often drinks or bathes. It gives a melodic “swee-tee-eeer” song and a spitting, tinny “prrrrrt” call. The Bar-breasted Firefinch is very similar to the Red-billed Firefinch, but has a brown (not reddish) crown; the Brown Firefinch has a brown rump.

识别特征

The red-billed firefinch is 10 cm (3.9 in) in length. The adult male has entirely scarlet plumage apart from brown wings. The bill is pink, and there is a yellow eye-ring. Females have uniformly brown upperparts and buff underparts. There is a small red patch in front of both eyes, with the bill also being pink.

分类信息

In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the red-billed firefinch in his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected in Senegal. He used the French name Le Sénégali rouge and the Latin name Senegalus Ruber. Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson. One of these was the red-billed firefinch. Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name Fringilla senegala and cited Brisson's work. The species is now placed in the genus Lagonosticta that was introduced by the German ornithologists Jean Cabanis in 1851.<p>There are six subspecies:

学名
Lagonosticta senegala
命名信息
(Linnaeus, 1766)
Passeriformes
Estrildidae
Lagonosticta

分布与栖息地

This widespread and abundant species is often found around human habitation, often with other species such as the red-cheeked cordon-bleu. Its soft queet-queet call is a familiar African sound. The song is a rising chick-pea-pea-pea.<p>The red-billed firefinch is a small gregarious bird which feeds mainly on grain and other seeds. It frequents open grassland and cultivation. The nest is a large domed grass structure with a side entrance, built low in a bush, wall or thatch into which three to six white eggs are laid. The nest of this species is parasitised by the village indigobird.

迁徙
Resident species

保护状况

种群趋势
stable

照片

分布

鸟叫声

开始您的观鸟之旅

在户外识别鸟类,并在下一次观察时随手查阅鸟类图鉴。