Monochrome bullfinch
| Monochrome bullfinch | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Crithagra concolor | ||||||||||||
| ( Barboza du Bocage , 1888) |
The monochrome bullfinch ( Crithagra concolor ), also known as monochrome girlitz , monochrome weaver or Thomas Dickschnabel weaver , is an extremely rare bird from the genus Crithagra within the finch family . It used to be in the monotypical genus Neospiza . Based on a genetic study from 2012, which shows a close relationship to the canaries, it was placed in the genus Crithagra . It is endemic to the island of São Tomé in the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic and has a very small range of 16 km². It was discovered in 1888 by the Portuguese naturalist Francisco Newton from the Lisbon Museum, who studied the flora and fauna of the Gulf of Guinea for over ten years.
description
This stocky bird, 18 centimeters long, has a massive beak that has a grayish, yellowish-brown tint. Upper and lower body are evenly colored reddish brown. The head, wings and tail are slightly darker in color.
Habitat and way of life
Little is known about his way of life. It is a lowland dweller and occurs in the primary forest with a closed forest roof. Observations are very difficult because he is mostly quiet and hidden in the thick foliage of the treetops .
Danger
The monochrome bullfinch was considered to be extinct around 1900 and for a long time was only known from three specimens. One museum specimen is in the Natural History Museum in London and the other two were destroyed in a museum fire in Lisbon in 1978.
It was only rediscovered in 1991 in a forest fragment on the Xufexufe River in the southwest of the island. Adult birds and a juvenile bird were observed for the first time in 1997 and photographed for the first time in 2001. Its decline began when the Portuguese established cocoa and coffee plantations on the island. Large forest areas up to a height of 1500 meters above sea level had to give way to the plantations. Today, the privatization of the country and the associated establishment of small farms, the construction of roads and introduced animal species such as the black rat , the monkey cat , the African civet cat and the weasel could lead to another disappearance of this bird species, of which there are fewer than 50 specimens today gives.
literature
- Day, David: The Doomsday Book of Animals , Ebury Press, London, 1981. ISBN 0-670-27987-0 (English)
Web links
- BirdLife International: Species Factsheet - Crithagra concolor (engl.)
- Monochrome bullfinch illustrated on a postage stamp
- Description ( memento of October 7, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) (French)
- Report on the rediscovery
- Crithagra concolor inthe IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2016.3. Posted by: BirdLife International, 2016. Retrieved March 13, 2017.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Dario Zuccon, Robert Prys-Jones, Pamela C. Rasmussen, Per GP Ericson: The phylogenetic relationships and generic limits of finches (Fringillidae) , Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 2012, pp. 581-596, doi : 10.1016 / j.ympev .2011.10.002