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Chestnut Munia | Lonchura atricapilla
Kastanjenon | Capuchino castaño
The Chestnut Munia is a munia from South and South-east Asia that reached the Caribbean as a cage bird. Established populations are known from Jamaica and Martinique. Older Caribbean literature treated it together with Tricolored Munia Lonchura malacca as a single species, so older island records cannot always be assigned to either one.
Voice
A thin, high peet or tee contact call, often repeated in flight. The song is very quiet and audible only at close range.
Recording: Sam Hambly — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
11–12 cm, compact, with a short tail and a thick, pale blue-grey bill. Head, neck and upper breast are black; the rest of the body is warm chestnut, with a rufous rump and uppertail coverts that show mainly in flight. The centre of the belly and the undertail coverts are blackish. The sexes are similar. Juveniles are plain pale brown above and pale buff to whitish below, lack the black head and have a darker bill.
Confusion species
Tricolored Munia Lonchura malacca also has a black head, but a white lower breast and white flanks; intermediates occur. Java Sparrow Padda oryzivora is larger and grey, with white cheeks and a large pink bill. Scaly-breasted Munia Lonchura punctulata has a brown head and scaly underparts. Juveniles are barely separable from young Tricolored and Scaly-breasted Munias and are best identified by the adults in the flock.
Habitat
Wet, open areas with tall grass and reeds: rice fields, freshwater marshes, flooded grassland, the banks of ditches and canals, and the edges of cane fields. It forages in flocks on rice and grass seeds, often with other munias. The nest is a loose ball of grass with a side entrance, in tall vegetation or a shrub.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Introduced and established on Jamaica and Martinique. Isolated records from Cuba and Trinidad. Reports from other Greater Antilles in the literature partly refer to Tricolored Munia and cannot always be assigned with confidence. Native from northern India and Nepal through South-east Asia and southern China to Taiwan, the Philippines, Borneo and Sulawesi. Also introduced to Hawaii, Japan and Palau.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Rice fields and wet grassland in the lowlands of Jamaica and Martinique are the most promising areas. Small flocks fly low over the fields, giving the thin contact call. The entirely chestnut underparts separate adults from Tricolored Munia.
Conservation status
Not threatened globally. In the Caribbean a locally established alien that can become a pest in rice-growing areas.
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. Lonchura is Greek, from lonkhē 'spear-head' and oura 'tail', after the pointed tail. atricapilla is Latin, from ater 'black' and capillus 'hair of the head', after the black head. The specimen the first description was based on came from lower Bengal.