All species › Passerines › Munias, parrotfinches, waxbills and allies › Chestnut Munia
Chestnut Munia | Lonchura atricapilla
Kastanjenon | Capuchino castaño | Capuchinho-castanho
The Chestnut Munia is a small estrildid finch from South and South-east Asia, where it lives in rice fields and grassland. It is widely traded as a cage bird, and escaped birds have become established at several places outside Asia. In the guide area it has been reported mainly from Colombia; whether a self-sustaining population exists there is not established.
Voice
A thin, nasal contact call, roughly peet, often repeated by the birds of a group. The song is soft and barely audible, with clicks and high, drawn-out notes.
Recording: Sam Hambly — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
11–12 cm, stocky, with a thick, conical, blue-grey bill. The head, neck and upper breast are black; the rest of the body is uniform chestnut, with a small black patch in the centre of the belly and black undertail coverts. The rump is dark reddish brown. The sexes are alike. Juveniles are plain brown above and paler buff below, with a dark bill.
Confusion species
Tricolored Munia Lonchura malacca has the same black head, but white breast sides and flanks; in the guide area it is far more numerous, and birds with blotchy or dingy underparts may be hybrids or moulting birds. Juveniles of the two species can hardly be separated in the field. The male Chestnut-bellied Seed Finch Sporophila angolensis has a black back, a white wing patch and a black bill.
Habitat
In the guide area reported from rice fields, wet grassland, rank vegetation and gardens in the warm lowlands and valleys, often together with Tricolored Munias. It feeds on grass seeds and rice. The nest is a domed structure of grasses with a side entrance, low in tall grass or a shrub.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
In Colombia scattered records, mainly in the west and the Cauca Valley; in Ecuador a few reports. Some records may involve escaped cage birds or misidentified Tricolored Munias. Not known from Peru, Bolivia or the Galápagos. Native from north-eastern India and southern China to South-east Asia and the Greater Sundas.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Check flocks of Tricolored Munias in rice fields and wet grassland for birds without white below. Document a record with a photograph and note that this is an introduced species.
Conservation status
Least Concern. In the guide area an introduced species whose establishment is uncertain; no effect on native wildlife is known.
Scientific name
Lonchura atricapilla | (Vieillot, 1807)
Vieillot described the species in 1807 as Loxia atricapilla; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Lonchura was introduced in 1832 by Sykes. The genus name comes from Greek lonchē, 'spearhead, lance', and oura, 'tail', after the pointed tail. The species name comes from Latin ater, 'black', and capillus, 'hair of the head': 'black-capped'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Lower Bengal, India/Bangladesh.