Endangered
Seychelles magpie-robin
Copsychus sechellarum
Seychelles magpie-robin is a perching bird in the family Muscicapidae (order Passeriformes) — Copsychus sechellarum, recorded as Endangered and tied to Seychelles.
Appearance
It has a glossy coal-black plumage with a white-colored bar on each wing.
This species of magpie-robin is approximately 25 cm (9.8 in) in length.
Published measurements include mass about 77.
Range and habitat
The Seychelles magpie-robin is a medium-sized endangered bird from the granitic Seychelles in the Indian Ocean. Its habitat is woodlands, plantations and the vicinity of gardens. Their range on the island of Fregate was limited by the area of open ground with leaf litter.
Historically, it is believed to have existed on most of the granitic Seychelles islands. By 1970, it was on the brink of extinction, with only 16 individuals remaining, all on Frégate Island.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Habits
Perching birds hold with three toes forward and one back. A named island starling or leafbird in this catalog is a wild population, not a cage type.
In crisis
Destruction of habitat and introduced predators (domestic cats and dogs brought in to manage the numbers of rats and mice) greatly reduced its numbers. Over the next two decades it had managed to stave off extinction, but its population in 1990 was still only 21 individuals. Today, there are established populations of Seychelles magpie-robins on all five islands.
As of 2012, the total population was 244–248 birds (Frégate- 115), (Cousin- 38), (Cousine- 31), (Aride- 24), (Denis- 36-40) and the IUCN has downlisted its status from Critically Endangered to Endangered. Even so, a recent genetic study reported extremely low genetic diversity across the islands, calling for continued genetic monitoring of the populations.
Seychelles magpie-robin 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 Seychelles magpie-robin, Wikidata item Q280225. 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.
