Endangered
Carduelis cucullata
Spinus cucullatus
The red siskin is a small endangered finch.
Appearance
The male is mainly deep red, with black on the head, throat, flight feathers and tail tip, and a whitish lower belly and under tail. The female is grey on the head, breast, and upper parts, apart from a red rump and upper tail. The breast is grey with reddish flanks, and the rest of the underparts, the wings and tail resemble the corresponding areas of the male.
The red siskin is about 10 cm long.
Range and habitat
It is native to tropical South America - in northern Colombia, northern Venezuela (where it is called the "cardenalito") and Guyana. It was common in the early 20th century, occurring throughout the foothills of northern Venezuela, but has now become extremely rare in a fragmented range.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
The female is believed to lay three greenish-white eggs in a grassy cup nest in a tree. Red siskins eat seeds and are highly gregarious.
In crisis
The red siskin is a small endangered finch. This siskin has been illegally trapped for the cage bird trade and endangered by environmental factors. Domestication has probably been responsible for the continuation of the species, that might otherwise be extinct.
The red siskin is listed as endangered by the IUCN Red List and nationally critically endangered in Venezuela. The greatest threat to the species has been intense illegal trapping for the bird trade since the 1940s. Even so, the species also faces extensive habitat loss.
Carduelis cucullata is 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 Carduelis cucullata, Wikidata item Q27075875. 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.
