Butterfly finch
| Butterfly finch | ||||||||||||
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Butterfly finch ( Uraeginthus bengalus ) |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Uraeginthus bengalus | ||||||||||||
| ( Linnaeus , 1766) |
The butterfly finch ( Uraeginthus bengalus ), also known as the butterfly finch or red-eared butterfly finch , is an African species from the finch family . It occurs in numerous subspecies, although the exact number is still disputed.
Together with the violet tiger and the blue-headed and Angola butterfly finch , it belongs to the genus of the blue tiger . Butterfly finches are kept relatively often in Europe as ornamental birds.
description
The butterfly finch reaches a body length of twelve centimeters and is one of the medium-sized splendid finch species. The plumage shows the gray and bright blue colors that are typical for all blue trildes. The female lacks the red patches on the cheeks, by means of which the male can be distinguished from those of the Angola and blue-headed butterfly finches. The blue parts of the plumage are more dull in the female than in the male and are less extensive. Depending on the subspecies, the sides of the body can also be brownish and the sides of the head and throat brownish instead of blue. Young birds are brownish and generally lighter than the adult birds. They are only matt blue on the upper tail-coverts and on the tail, throat and goiter area.
Distribution area and way of life
The range of the butterfly finch is very large. It stretches from West to East Africa and from there southwest to Angola . The habitat are thorn thickets of arid areas, tree steppes and sparse dry forest. If there is water in the vicinity, they penetrate far into the dry steppe. Its altitude distribution reaches 2,400 meters in altitude in Ethiopia. It has also opened up human settlement areas and occurs, among other things, on the edge of villages. The food is mainly taken from the ground and consists of small seeds, as well as termites and other insects.
The breeding season varies depending on the location and falls during the rainy season and the beginning of the dry season. Like the Angola butterfly finch , the butterfly finch also displays a halo. In the case of the butterfly finch, however, the female also shows a halmbalz, which, however, only rarely during the male courtship dance. Most of the time, this dance of the female can only be seen when the male is not around.
Butterfly finches build their spherical nests in dense thorn bushes and prefer to be close to wasp and hornet nests, which help keep predators away from the nest. They also occasionally use the abandoned nests of weaver birds . The clutch consists of four to five white eggs. These are incubated by the parent birds for 14 days. The nestling period is three weeks. After the young birds have left the nest, they are looked after by the parent birds for another two to three weeks.
attitude
The butterfly finch is one of the most popular and most frequently kept African finches because of its attractive coloring and drawing. However, it can no longer be determined when it was first kept and bred in Europe. Butterfly finches are still imported regularly, although they are now bred very often. Like almost all fine finches, these imported birds are particularly vulnerable because they do not tolerate the stress of transport well and the keeping conditions during transport are not appropriate to the species. The males seem to be particularly sensitive, so that male butterfly finches are sometimes more difficult to obtain commercially than females.
supporting documents
literature
- Horst Bielfeld : Knowing and caring for 300 ornamental birds. Ulmer Verlag, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-8001-5737-2 .
- Jürgen Nicolai (Ed.), Joachim Steinbacher (Ed.), Renate van den Elzen, Gerhard Hofmann, Claudia Mettke-Hofmann: Prachtfinken - Afrika , Series Handbuch der Vogelpflege, Eugen Ulmer Verlag, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-8001- 4964-3
Web links
- Uraeginthus bengalus inthe IUCN 2013 Red List of Threatened Species . Listed by: BirdLife International, 2012. Retrieved February 6, 2014.