Chestnut Sparrow
| Chestnut Sparrow | ||||||||||||
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Male chestnut sparrow ( Passer eminibey ) |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Passer eminibey | ||||||||||||
| ( Hartlaub , 1880) |
The Chestnut Sparrow ( Passer eminibey ), also Emingoldsperling called, is an African bird art from the family of sparrows . It is the smallest species in the genus Passer and comes in Eastern Africa from Sudan as far as Somalia and south to Tanzania before, where he savannas and grasslands in swamp near inhabited. It sometimes breeds in small colonies and sometimes takes over the nests of weaver birds .
The chestnut sparrow is one of the few sparrow species that are occasionally kept as an ornamental bird in Europe .
description
The chestnut sparrow reaches a body length of 11–11.5 and is therefore about the size of a blue tit . The sexes differ significantly in the plumage color.
The plumage of the male in the breeding dress is almost completely chestnut brown, the face part a little darker. The small and medium-sized arm covers are also maroon, the large arm covers and the hand covers are black with maroon hems and some with light tips. The wing is black. The fringes of the black-brown large plumage are warm beige to rust-brown and quite broad on the umbrella feathers. The beak is black, the feet pale brown. Outside the breeding season, some of the worn plumage loses its chestnut brown color. It then appears untidy and is interspersed with light-colored seams, especially on the chest, and dark feathers on the back and shoulders. The beak is then pale brown with a dark tip.
In the female, the upper side is brown-gray up to the sides of the neck and on the front back. From the reins a warm beige stripe over the eyes extends to the back of the ear covers. The face is tinged with beige and there is a beige-brown to light chestnut-colored spot on the chin and throat. The underside is whitish and washed beige-brown on the chest and flanks. The back is brown-gray, warm brown towards the shoulders and clearly interspersed with dark feathers on top. The rump is warm brown, the upper tail-coverts like the tail brown. The latter wears warm beige hems. The wing plumage is similar to that of the male, but the edges are much lighter beige. The beak is pale yellow with a gray tip and edges.
The youth dress is similar to that of the female but is much paler. In the first winter, the male clearly shows the chestnut color. On the upper side it is interspersed with light-colored edges, the still predominantly light-colored underside is covered with a sickle-shaped, chestnut-brown spot.
The male of the chestnut sparrow is unmistakable due to the color of the plumage. The females can be confused with those of the house sparrow . Female chestnut sparrows differ from those of the house sparrow in the brown rump and the brownish tone of the underside of the body.
voice
The call is a muffled chirp. At the nest, the male gives a high, chirping trill.
distribution
The distribution area of the monotypical chestnut sparrow stretches scattered from western Sudan through Ethiopia to southwestern Somalia . In the south, it spreads over eastern Uganda and Kenya to the north of central Tanzania . It is frequent or locally frequent and not threatened.
Way of life
The species inhabits dry grasslands and savannas with shrubbery and acacia thickets, often near wetlands and papyrus swamps . It is not uncommon to find them in the vicinity of settlements. It can be found in pairs or in small groups, sometimes it socializes with weaver birds of the genus Quelea or smaller species.
The chestnut sparrow usually breeds in colonies or scattered clusters. The nest is usually high in bushes or tree tops. In addition to self-made nests, the nests of weaver birds are also used for the breeding business, such as marble spätzling , Somali weavers or Cabanis weavers . Occasionally they are also found in colonies with these species. It is thought possible that the chestnut sparrow will develop into a nesting parasite that no longer builds nests itself. In a breeding colony in which in addition to 6,000 breeding pairs of the marble sparrow also 100 breeding pairs of the chestnut sparrow were found, the males of the chestnut sparrow drove the marble sparrow out of the nests. The chestnut sparrows did not build their own nests, nor did they use any abandoned nests of the marble sparrows. Similar behaviors were also observed with the dwarf weaver , black -headed weaver and Jackson weaver . The behavior of the chestnut sparrow seems to be triggered by the nest-building activities of the weaver birds. The male of the chestnut sparrow remains in the weaver's nest for several hours, courting there. It attacks the weaver birds coming to the nest, but is also chased away and bitten by them, but ultimately the weaver birds give up their nest.
The incubation of the clutch takes 13 days. The breeding is mainly done by the female, who is only replaced by the male for a short time. The breeding season for captive birds is 18 to 19 days. In contrast, both sexes are involved in raising the nestlings. The nestling period is 17 days.
The chestnut sparrow feeds on a variety of seeds, but also eats household waste and insects. The nestling food consists mainly of small insects.
Research history and systematics
The chestnut sparrow was first scientifically described as Sorella emini bey by Gustav Hartlaub in the Journal für Ornithologie in 1880 . Harlaub gave the species the specific epithet emini bey in honor of the German-born African explorer and governor of the province of Equatoria Eduard Schnitzer , who had become known in the Ottoman Empire as Emin Pascha or Emin Bey. Eduard Schnitzer had collected the specimen copy either in what is now southern Sudan or in Uganda. Hartlaub's unusual spelling of the Artephitethon led to the fact that the species was occasionally referred to as Sorella emini or Sorella emini-bey .
Hartlaub took the view that the unusual plumage color of the chestnut sparrow and its physique differed sufficiently from other Passer species to justify its classification in its own monotypical genus Sorella . Today, however, the chestnut sparrow is consistently classified in the genus Passer . The chestnut sparrow is closely related to two other Passer species, which also have an unusual plumage color for a Passer species. The males of the Yemen gold sparrow are almost completely yellow, the males of the brown-backed gold sparrow have a chestnut brown back and otherwise yellow plumage. All three types show very similar behaviors. It is particularly noticeable that they show courtship behavior together with the Moabsperling , in which the male holds them high while the wings are trembling.
The chestnut sparrow, the Yemen gold sparrow and the brown-backed gold back sparrow have long been considered the most original species within the genus Passer with only a relatively low degree of relationship to the house sparrow and the other black-throated sparrow species found in the Palearctic. They were therefore occasionally placed in the genus Auripasser . Investigations of the mitochondrial DNA indicate, however, that the chestnut sparrow as well as the Yemen and brown-backed gold sparrow either descend from these black-throated sparrow species or are closely related to them.
literature
- P. Clement, A. Harris, J. Davis: Finches and Sparrows , Helm Identification Guides, London 1993/1999, ISBN 0-7136-5203-9
- H. Bielfeld: Knowing and caring for 300 ornamental birds , Ulmer Verlag, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-8001-5737-2
- C. Hilary Fry and Stuart Keith (Eds.): The Birds of Africa. Volume VII. Christopher Helm, London 2004, ISBN 0-7136-6531-9 .
- J. Denis Summers-Smith : The Sparrows: a study of the genus Passer . Calton, Staffs, England, 1988. ISBN 0-85661-048-8 .
Web links
- Passer eminibey in the Red List of Threatened Species of the IUCN 2009. Posted by: BirdLife International, 2009. Retrieved on June 14 of 2010.
- Videos, photos and sound recordings of Passer eminibey in the Internet Bird Collection
Single receipts
- ↑ Fry et al., P. 35
- ↑ Fry et al., P. 35
- ↑ Fry et al., P. 35
- ↑ Fry et al., P. 35
- ↑ Fry et al., P: 36
- ↑ a b Gustav Hartlaub: About some new ones from Dr. Emin Bey, Governor of the Equatorial Provinces of Egypt, discovered birds around Lado, Central Africa . In: Journal of Ornithology . 28, No. 2, April 1880, pp. 210-214. doi : 10.1007 / BF02008812 .
- ^ Ernst Hartert: Miscellanea Ornithologica: Critical, Nomenclatorial, and Other Notes, Mostly on Palaearctic Birds . In: Novitates Zoologicae . 11, 1904.
- ↑ Luis M. Allende, Rubio, Isabel; Ruíz-del-Valle, Valentin; Guillén, Jesus; Martínez-Laso, Jorge; Lowy, Ernesto; Varela, Pilar; Zamora, Jorge; Arnaiz-Villena, Antonio: The Old World sparrows (genus Passer ) phylogeography and their relative abundance of nuclear mtDNA pseudogenes . (PDF) In: Journal of Molecular Evolution . 53, No. 2, 2001, pp. 144-154. PMID 11479685 .