Bird watching in Africa - Red-billed Firefinch or Senegal Firefinch

The red-billed firefinch or Senegal firefinch (Lagonosticta senegala) is a small passerine bird. This estrildid finch is a resident breeding bird in most of Sub-Saharan Africa with an estimated global extent of occurrence of 10,000,000 km2. This species was introduced to Egypt, however, the introduced population has become extinct.

Range and habitat
This widespread and abundant species is often found around human habitation, often with other species such as the red-cheeked cordon-bleu, and its soft queet-queet call is a familiar African sound. The song is a rising chick-pea-pea-pea.

The red-billed firefinch is a small gregarious bird which feeds mainly on grain and other seeds. It frequents open grassland and cultivation. The nest is a large domed grass structure with a side entrance, built low in a bush, wall or thatch into which three to six white eggs are laid. The nest of this species is parasitised by the village indigobird.

Range map from www.oiseaux.net - Ornithological Portal Oiseaux.net

www.oiseaux.net is one of those MUST visit pages if you're in to bird watching. You can find just about everything there

Taxonomy
In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the red-billed firefinch in his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected in Senegal. He used the French name Le Sénégali rouge and the Latin Senegalus Ruber.

Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson.

One of these was the red-billed firefinch. Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name Fringilla senegala and cited Brisson's work. The species is now placed in the genus Lagonosticta that was introduced by the German ornithologists Jean Cabanis in 1851.

There are six subspecies:

• L. s. senegala (Linnaeus, 1766) – Mauritania, Senegal and Gambia to west and central Nigeria

• L. s. rhodopsis (Heuglin, 1863) – east Nigeria, north and central Cameroon and south Chad to Sudan, west Eritrea and west Ethiopia

• L. s. brunneiceps Sharpe, 1890 – central Ethiopia and southeast Sudan

• L. s. somaliensis Salvadori, 1894 – southeast Ethiopia and south Somalia

• L. s. ruberrima Reichenow, 1903 – Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda and west Kenya to northeast Angola, northeast Zambia and north Malawi

• L. s. rendalli Hartert, 1898 – south Angola to Mozambique south to South Africa

Description
The red-billed firefinch is 10 cm in length. The adult male has entirely scarlet plumage apart from brown wings. The bill is pink, and there is a yellow eye-ring. Females have uniformly brown upperparts and buff underparts. There is a small red patch in front of both eyes, and the bill is pink.

Female on the left hand side
Male on the right hand side

Djibouti - September 2018

Female on the left hand side
Male on the right hand side

Djibouti - September 2018

Listen to the Red-billed firefinch

Sound from www.xeno-canto.org

Conservation status

Least Concern (IUCN 3.1)

IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2013.2. International Union for Conservation of Nature. Retrieved 26 November 2013.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

www.birdforum.net

Sighted: (Date of first photo that I could use) 7 September 2018
Location: Around Acacias Hotel in Djibouti, Djibouti

Red-billed Firefinch / Senegal Firefinch - Around Acacias Hotel in Djibouti, Djibouti - 9 September 2018

Red-billed Firefinch / Senegal Firefinch - 20 October 2019 - Chelekleka Lake, Bebre Zeit, Ethiopia

Red-billed Firefinch / Senegal Firefinch
27 October 2019 - Abidjatta-Shalla Natyional Park, HQ area, Ethiopia

Red-billed Firefinch / Senegal Firefinch
28 October 2019 - Sabana Beach Resort at Lake Langano, Ethiopia

Red-billed Firefinch / Senegal Firefinch
12 November 2019 - Sheraton Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Female Red-billed Firefinch / Senegal Firefinch
12 November 2019 - Sheraton Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

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