Mozambique girlitz
| Mozambique girlitz | ||||||||||||
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Mozambique girlitz ( Crithagra mozambica ) |
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| Crithagra mozambica | ||||||||||||
| ( Statius Müller , 1776) |
The Mozambique girlitz ( Crithagra mozambica , Syn . : Crithagra mozambicus , Serinus mozambicus ) is a species of finch from the goldfinch-like subfamily . It was originally found only in sub-Saharan Africa, where it is a common and widespread type of girlitz. In the meantime it has also been introduced in regions far beyond its area of distribution.
The Mozambique girl is kept as an ornamental bird both in its area of distribution and in Europe. Commercial fishing quotas are issued in Botswana , among others , and up to 10,000 Mozambique chicks are legally exported annually in Mozambique. The extent of the illegal bird trade is not known.
There are several subspecies. The IUCN classifies the Mozambique girl seat as not endangered ( least concern ).
description
The Mozambique girl reaches a body length of twelve centimeters. The plumage is yellow on the underside. They also have a bright yellow over-eye stripe . The plumage on the upper side of the body is gray with broad yellow borders. The females can be recognized by the males by their gray-spotted throat. The male's throat, on the other hand, is pure yellow. The male also has dark streaks of beard. The beak is short and strong. The eyes are dark brown, the legs are also dark brown.
Fledglings are a little more brown on the upper side than the adult birds and have more vertical stripes. The underside of the body is pale yellow, the region from chin to chest is washed out brownish, the sides of the chest and the flanks merge into an olive brown. On the upper chest they have some dark brown spots, on the flanks there are thin longitudinal stripes.
There is a possibility of confusion with some subspecies of the yellow-bellied girl . Similar to the Mozambique girlitz, these subspecies have a yellow forehead and black beard stripes. However, they are slightly larger and have a greenish rather than yellow rump. The Mozambique girl seat differs from the yellow breasted girl seat by the purely yellow underside of the body. The possibility of confusion with the nominate form of the white-bellied girlitz is particularly great, but the beard stripe is less sharply drawn.
Distribution area and habitat
The distribution area of the Mozambique girl extends south of the Sahara from West to East and South Africa. It is only missing in the arid regions and rainforests. It was introduced on the islands of São Tomé , Mafia , Mauritius , Réunion , Rodriguez , Assomption , Hawaii and Puerto Rico , among others . The population that insisted on the Amiranten for some time has died out again.
Its habitat are savannahs and light forest areas. It occurs among other things in the miombo , a large type of forest savannah, in clearings, plantations, grasslands with a few isolated trees and bushes and in bank vegetation. Sparse sand-covered dunes and marshes as well as mangroves are also populated by the Mozambique girl. He has also opened up human settlement areas. It occurs on plantations, on the outskirts of towns, on farms and in gardens, parks and on the edges of fields. It is particularly common at the edge of millet fields . On farms, he even invades barns and stables to pick grain. He often sits on elevated waiting areas such as tree tops, fence posts, and telephone wires.
Way of life
Outside the breeding season, it lives in family groups or small schools. These swarms usually contain five to ten individuals, but occasionally swarms of 20 to 100 individuals can also be observed. Basically, the Mozambique girl is a very agile and conspicuous bird. Mozambique girls gathered in troops are very shouting and often interact with one another. Individuals regularly threaten or chase one another. They often drink and bathe together in shallow puddles. Switch resting places; a troop that falls to rest in a bush or tree often takes a long time to come to rest.
The Mozambique girl mainly, but not exclusively, searches for food on the ground. While foraging it is often socialized with finches and widow birds . Mozambique girls are able to move continuously on the ground. However, a hopping mode of locomotion is typical for them.
Mozambique's diet consists of grass seeds, millet, and the seeds and flowers of a number of daisy family. It also eats fruits, petals, small fruits and insects. He especially likes to eat the achenes of Ursinia and Scheinastern . It eats seeds of eucalyptus, sunflower, sorghum caffrorum , panicum maximum , horsetail cassuarina , the petals of torch lilies and the leaves of Chinese rose hawk . He also drinks the nectar of various types of aloe. To peck grass seeds from the ears, it lands halfway up the stalk and moves sideways up the stalk until it bends down under its weight and the Mozambique girl can easily pick the seeds. If the stalk shoots up again, the bird repeats the maneuver.
Reproduction
The Mozambique girl is usually a monogamous territorial single breeder. However, two to three nests of this type are found relatively regularly, which are only two or three meters apart, either in the same or in neighboring trees. The breeding time depends on the distribution area. For example, they breed in Mauritania from July to October, in Gambia the breeding season falls in November and in Burkina Faso in December.
The nest is a small, compact bowl that is usually made of fine grass and plant fibers. The actual nesting trough is lined with very fine plant fibers. The bowl usually has an outer diameter of 6 to 7 centimeters, the nesting trough inside measures between 4 and 4.4 centimeters. The nest is usually built at a height of one to four meters above the ground. It is built either in forks of branches or in a place where twigs and leaves overlap so that they can support a nest. Usually the nests are in the outer crown area.
The nest is built by the female. It is accompanied by the male when collecting nesting material and the male sits nearby and sings when she builds the nesting material. The clutch usually consists of two to three eggs. The eggs are whitish, only a few have occasional fine orange-brown scratches or dark brown spots. It is only the female that breeds, the male stays nearby and often sings from a control room near the nest. He also brings in food which he feeds the female. The breeding season is 13 to 14.5 days. The nestling period is 16 to 24 days. The fledglings that have fledged are initially fed by both parent birds and form a close family group with them.
Life expectancy
65 percent of birds that are older than six months also reach the next year of life. Adult Mozambique girls therefore usually live two to three years old in the wild. Exceptions are birds that live to be six to seven years old. The oldest bird recorded in the wild reached an age of 8.5 years. Birds kept in captivity can age significantly. The oldest bird here was 16.5 years old.
Mozambique girls and people
The Mozambique girl has long been a frequently kept ornamental bird. As early as the 1930s, ornithologists reported that this species was to be found regularly as a cage bird in the north of Mozambique. The attitude was also widespread in South Africa. An ornithologist reported that in some villages this species is kept as pets in almost every house: ... where road workers took their birds to work, there was a long row of cages on the side of the road , according to a report from the 1960s. The birds are usually caught with live traps and liming rods. Although the number of birds removed from the wild each year is unknown, it is considered unlikely that this catch would have a significant impact on the population.
literature
- Horst 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 .
Web links
- Crithagra mozambica inthe IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2017.3. Listed by: BirdLife International, 2016. Retrieved January 26, 2018.
- BirdLife International: Species Factsheet - Yellow-fronted Canary ( Crithagramozambica ) . Retrieved January 26, 2018.
- Videos, photos and sound recordings of Yellow-fronted Canary (Crithagra mozambica) in the Internet Bird Collection
- Mozambique girlitz ( Crithagra mozambica ) at Avibase; Retrieved January 2, 2012.
- xeno-canto: Sound recordings - Yellow-fronted Canary ( Crithagra mozambica )