Mongolian bullfinch
| Mongolian bullfinch | ||||||||||||
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Pair of Mongolian bullfinches ( Bucanetes mongolicus ), |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Bucanetes mongolicus | ||||||||||||
| ( Swinhoe , 1870) |
The Mongolian bullfinch ( Bucanetes mongolicus ) is a species of finch that inhabits deserts and semi-deserts from eastern Turkey to Central Asia . It is related to the desert bullfinch ( Bucanetes githagineus ) and used to be listed as a subspecies of the same.
description
Appearance
The Mongolian bullfinch is very similar to the desert bullfinch and, like the latter, with a length of 11.5–13 cm, is somewhat smaller than a linnet . The beak is a little finer and less high and colored light yellowish to gray-brown. The top is sandy-brown and (in contrast to the desert bullfinch) slightly streaked. This coloring continues a little lighter on the underside of the youth dress and merges in a slight transition into the light creamy white of the lower abdomen and the underside of the tail. The throat and the sides of the neck are also a little lighter cream. In the adult bird there is also a more or less strong pink, which extends from the face, where it covers the area above the eye and the front cheeks, over the throat, chest and flanks, where it partly mixes with the sand-colored basic color. Arm and hand wings are dark with light fringes at the end. At the base, the wings of the hand show clear pink hems, the wings of the arm are broadly lined with white and form a bright field. The large arm covers are lined with pink on a dark background and white at the base. The white bases of the wings and covers form two distinct white bands or fields in both the sitting and the flying bird. The hand covers are dark, the middle arm covers sand-colored and lined with pink. The wing markings are usually more pronounced in males than in females. When young, the wings are predominantly ocher to dark brown with lighter hems on the large and middle arm covers.
voice
Even if the English name Mongolian Trumpeter Finch suggests this, the voice of the Mongolian bullfinch is not characterized by trumpeting sounds like that of the desert bullfinch. The flight call is a rising “tü-wüit”, which can sometimes sound more monosyllabic. The chant is a short, melodic verse that is slowly repeated.
behavior
Like the desert bullfinch, the Mongolian bullfinch is often found in small groups. He shows little fear of humans.
Distribution and existence
The species typical for Central Asia breeds in a belt between 40–50 ° and 30–35 ° N. In the west there is already a single occurrence in eastern Turkey , the closed distribution begins in Transcaucasia and in the Elburs Mountains . It extends over large parts of Kazakhstan and the Central Asian former Soviet republics to western China . In the south it extends to north and east Iran , Afghanistan and the northernmost parts of India and Pakistan , in the north-east to southern Siberia , Mongolia and north-western China. Since the species mainly inhabits habitats that are hardly usable for humans, it is not threatened.
Systematics
The Mongolian bullfinch is related to the desert bullfinch ( Bucanetes githagineus ), but contrary to earlier assumptions, it is not a subspecies of the same. In the area of Naxçıvan in Azerbaijan it breeds sympatricly with the desert bullfinch without mixing with it.
The British ornithologist Guy M. Kirwan proposed in 2005 (see literature) a division of the genus Bucanetes and a new genus Eremopsaltria for the Mongolian bullfinch . It justified this by saying that the four "stone Gimpel" types Trumpeter Finch , Mongolian Finch ( Bucanetes mongolicus ), white ( Rhodospiza obsoleta ) and Eurasian crimson-winged finch ( Rhodopechys sanguinea ), formerly also often in the genus Rhodopechys were combined, were indeed related, but the degree of relationship would best be represented by four monotypical genera. In 2012, however, this view was refuted on the basis of comparative genetic studies.
habitat
The Mongolian bullfinch inhabits deserts, semi-deserts and mountainous landscapes in Central Asia. It occurs - as for example in the Kyzylkum - in sandy deserts, in dry hilly landscapes or in the alpine zone. It mostly breeds in stony habitats, for example on scattered rocks in the steppe, in dry river valleys or on loamy and stony slopes. The altitude distribution ranges from about 400 to 4600 m. The Mongolian bullfinch is mainly an annual bird, it only migrates from higher altitudes in winter.
literature
- L. Svensson, PJ Grant, K. Mularney, D. Zetterström: The new cosmos bird guide. Franckh-Kosmos Verlags-GmbH, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-440-07720-9 .
- Eugene N. Panov in WJM Hagemeijer, MJ Blair: The EBCC Atlas of European Breeding Birds - their distribution and abundance. T & AD Poyser, London 1997, ISBN 0-85661-091-7 , p. 735.
- Leonid Alexandrowitsch Portenko , J. Stübs in E. Streseman et al .: Atlas of the distribution of Palearctic birds. Delivery 5 (1976, PDF )
- GM Kirwan, SMS Gregory: A new genus for the Mongolian Finch Bucanetes mongolicus (Swinhoe, 1870) . Bull. Brit. Orn. 2005, Cl. 125: 68-80.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Panov & Bulatova 1972, cited in Panov, p. literature
- ↑ Dario Zuccon, Robert Prys-Jones, Pamela C. Rasmussen, Per GP Ericson: The phylogenetic relationships and generic limits of finches (Fringillinae) , Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 62 (2012), pp. 581-596, doi : 10.1016 / j .ympev.2011.10.002
Web links
- Photos for Bucanetes mongolicus in the Oriental Bird Club image database , accessed March 17, 2010
- Videos, photos and sound recordings of Eremopsaltria mongolica in the Internet Bird Collection
- Bucanetes mongolicus in the endangered Red List species the IUCN 2008. Posted by: BirdLife International, 2008. Accessed on March 27 of 2009.
- Mongolian bullfinch in India
- More pictures
