Borneo bronze man
| Borneo bronze man | ||||||||||||
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Borneo bronze male ( Lonchura fuscans ) |
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| Lonchura fuscans | ||||||||||||
| ( Cassin , 1852) |
The Borneo bronze male ( Lonchura fuscans ), also called Borneo nun , Rotelmunie or red-brown nutmeg finch , is a species of the finch family . No subspecies are distinguished.
description
The Borneo bronze male reaches a body length of eleven centimeters and is one of the medium-sized splendid finches. There is no sexual dimorphism .
The wings and tail are black. The rest of the plumage is monochrome blackish brown, but the middle of the feathers is a bit lighter, so that a slight scale pattern is created, which is particularly noticeable on the sides of the body. The eyes are dark brown. The upper bill is blackish while the lower bill is lead gray. Feet and legs are blue-gray.
Fledglings are similar to adult birds, but they have completely black bills. The beak begins to change color about a month after the young birds have flown out.
Distribution and way of life
The Borneo bronze male is found on Borneo , the Natuna Islands , the Sulu Archipelago, and Banguey Island . The habitat is Alang Alang wilderness and rice fields. The species has also developed habitat for human settlement and is often found in the vicinity of localities. The way of life is very inconspicuous and hidden. Borneo bronze men are very often on the ground. Unlike black-bellied nuns, for example, they are difficult to drive out of rice fields because they do not fly up when disturbed, but rather hide between the stalks.
The diet consists of grass seeds and other seeds as well as grains of rice. The breeding season in northern Borneo falls mainly in the period October to May, but nests are found at all times of the year. The nests are often made very high in trees. Hollow trees are also used, and nests are also found under the roofs of huts. Very rarely, the nests are built in a tuft of grass low above the ground. The clutch usually consists of three to six white-shelled eggs. The incubation period is about 14 days. The young birds are hovered almost continuously for the first seven to eight days, then until they fly out during the night. The young birds of the Borneo bronze males leave the nest at around twenty to twenty-three days of life.
attitude
Borneo bronze men were first introduced to Europe in 1931. A larger number came to England in 1939. These birds were all resold to Denmark. These birds were first bred in 1940. Another import took place in England in 1958, after which Borneo bronze men were only imported very rarely over a long period of time. The few birds that came on the market were usually paired with Japanese gulls to breed a single-colored, dark morph. Regular offspring of this species did not occur until after 1980 and today there are relatively few keepers who keep and breed this species. The Association for the Protection of Species, Bird Keeping and Bird Breeding (AZ), for example, names only 18 young birds in 1998 that were bred with four breeding pairs.
supporting documents
literature
- Jürgen Nicolai (Ed.), Joachim Steinbacher (Ed.), Renate van den Elzen, Gerhard Hofmann: Prachtfinken - Australia, Oceania, Southeast Asia. Eugen Ulmer Verlag, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-8001-3249-4 .
- Peter Clement , Alan Harris, John Davis: Finches and Sparrows. An Identification Guide. Christopher Helm, London 1993, ISBN 0-7136-8017-2 .
Single receipts
- ↑ Nicolai et al., P. 294.
Web links
- Lonchura fuscans inthe IUCN 2013 Red List of Endangered Species . Listed by: BirdLife International, 2012. Retrieved October 9, 2013.