Violet-eared Waxbill

Granatina granatina

A stunning long-tailed waxbill with a red bill, mauve cheeks, and a blue rump. The underparts are vibrant chestnut in the male and cream-buff in the female. Pairs are resident in arid thorn savanna and drier woodlands, where they forage on the ground and lower layers of scrub, often in the company of other finches. The species can be secretive, flying quite a distance when flushed. The Black-faced Waxbill is dark like Violet-eared Waxbill, but it has a red rump, a dark mask, and barred wings. The Purple Grenadier lacks mauve cheeks, and its range does not overlap.

分类信息

The violet-eared waxbill was formally described in 1766 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the twelfth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Fringilla granatina. Linnaeus took the specific epithet from the earlier description by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson who in 1760 had used the French name Le Grenadin and the Latin Granatinus, meaning "grenadier" in English. Linnaeus mistakenly specified the locality as Brazil. This was an error originally introduced by the English naturalist George Edwards in 1743 who had believed that his specimen had come from Brazil. The locality was amended to Angola by William Lutley Sclater in 1930 and restricted to Huíla Province in Angola by Phillip Clancey in 1959. The violet-eared waxbill is now placed in the genus Granatina that was introduced in 1890 by the English ornithologist Richard Bowdler Sharpe. The species is treated as monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.

学名
Granatina granatina
命名信息
(Linnaeus, 1766)
Passeriformes
Estrildidae
Granatina

分布与栖息地

It is found in subtropical/ tropical (lowland) dry shrubland and savanna habitats in Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The status of the species is evaluated as Least Concern.

迁徙
Resident species

保护状况

种群趋势
stable

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分布

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