Black-breasted nun
| Black-breasted nun | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Lonchura teerinki | ||||||||||||
| Rand , 1940 |
The black -breasted nun ( Lonchura teerinki ), also known as the black-breasted reed finch , is a species of the finch family . There are two subspecies.
description
Black breasted nuns reach a body length of eleven centimeters. They do not show any pronounced sexual dimorphism . Both sexes have black foreheads. The reins, the area around the eyes, the sides of the head, the throat and the front chest are also black. The crown and the rear neck are black-brown, the back and the wings, on the other hand, are reddish-brown. The rear rump, the upper tail-coverts and the middle tail feathers are straw yellow. The remaining tail feathers are blackish with a narrow yellow outer edge. The under tail-coverts as well as the thighs are black. The rest of the underside of the body is white and has coarse black to black-brown speckles on the sides of the body. The large, powerful beak is lead gray.
Young birds are dark brown on the top of their bodies. The rump and the hems of the tail feathers are lighter. The throat is pale rust-colored. The underside of the body is whitish with light brown sides.
Distribution and way of life
The distribution area of the black-breasted nun is small. It occurs only in the mountains in western New Guinea . There she inhabits the grasslands at altitudes between 1600 and 2300 meters above sea level. It is particularly common in secondary growth, for example in overgrown gardens. It has also opened up human settlement space and can occasionally be observed in settlements. In its range, the black-breasted nun is increasingly exposed to competition from other species of finch. Large-billed nun , gray head nun , splendor nun , Braunbrust nun , height nun and the grief Munia penetrate increasingly faced synanthropic in this region.
Very little is known about their way of life outdoors. Birds of the nominate form Lonchura melaena melaena ready to breed were observed in March and August. Young birds of the subspecies Lonchura melaena mariae moulting into old age were seen in August.
attitude
The black-breasted nun was first imported into Switzerland in 1987. A few months later, a large number of black-breasted nuns were imported from Indonesia to Holland, Germany and Belgium. Although breeding is not considered very difficult, it is only followed by a very small number of keepers. In 1995 there were 39 young birds out of six pairs in Germany and in 1998 only three young birds out of a breeding pair.
literature
- Jürgen Nicolai (Ed.), Joachim Steinbacher (Ed.), Renate van den Elzen, Gerhard Hofmann: Prachtfinken - Australia, Oceania, Southeast Asia. Eugen Ulmer Verlag, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-8001-3249-4 .
- Peter Clement , Alan Harris, John Davis: Finches and Sparrows - An Identification Guide. Christopher Helm, London 1993, ISBN 0-7136-8017-2 .
Web links
- BirdLife Factsheet , accessed June 27, 2010.
- Lonchura teerinki inthe IUCN 2013 Red List of Threatened Species . Listed by: BirdLife International, 2012. Retrieved October 9, 2013.