Critically Endangered
Bali Myna
Leucopsar rothschildi
The Bali myna, also known as Rothschild's mynah, Bali starling, or Bali mynah, locally known as jalak Bali, is a medium-sized (up to 25 cm (9.8 in) long), stocky myna native to northeast Bali in Indonesia.
Appearance
It is almost wholly white with a long, drooping crest, black wing-tips and tail tip. It has a brown and yellow bill with blue bare skin around the eyes and legs. The black-winged myna (Acridotheres melanopterus), a similar species, has a shorter crest and a much larger area of black on wings and tail, plus a yellow eye-ring (without feathers) and legs.
The Bali myna is a medium-large starling around 25 centimetres (9.8 in) in length.
Range and habitat
The Bali myna's range is restricted to northwest Bali (and its offshore islands) in Indonesia, where it is the island's only endemic vertebrate species.
In 2018, there were three locations on Bali where the birds existed in the wild: the West Bali National Park. Bali's small island of Nusa Penida and Begawan Foundation's breeding and release site at Melinggih Kelod, Payangan.
Habitat labels include shrubland, savanna, and forest.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
The Bali myna's diet includes fruit, seeds, worms and insects. During the breeding season (the rainy season of Bali), males attract female by calling loudly and bobbing up and down.
The birds nest in tree cavities, with the female laying and incubating two or three eggs. Both males and females bring food to the nest for chicks after hatching.
In crisis
It is critically endangered and in 2020, fewer than 50 adults were assumed to exist in the wild. The Bali myna is critically endangered, and the wild population has been close to extinction since at least 1994. Trade even in captive-bred specimens is strictly regulated and the species is not generally available legally to private individuals.
The number of captive birds bought on the black market is estimated to be twice the number of legally acquired individuals in the captive breeding programs.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Bali Myna is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Bali Myna, Wikidata item Q756868. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
