Endangered
Shelley's crimsonwing
Cryptospiza shelleyi
Shelley's crimsonwing is a perching bird in the family Estrildidae (order Passeriformes) — Cryptospiza shelleyi, recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
It is a brightly coloured finch found at low levels. The male Shelley's crimson-wing has bright red crown, face and back, with contrasting black wings and tail, as well as olive-yellow underparts with warmer tones on flanks and belly. Shelley's crimsonwing is a vulnerable species of estrildid finch native to the Albertine Rift montane forests.
Range and habitat
Shelley's crimsonwing inhabits the closed-canopy moist forest, often in lush valley bottoms near water, as well as low secondary growth at forest edges, forest clearings and glades dominated by large herbs, bamboo thickets and the upper forest/moorland ecotone. It is found throughout the Albertine Rift montane forests, among them the Itombwe Mountain, Kahuzi-Biéga National Park and mountains at the west of Lake Kivu in Democratic Republic of Congo, Nyungwe Forest, Gishwati, Makwa and Mukura Forest in Rwanda, Bururi Forest and elsewhere in Burundi, the Rwenzori Mountains and Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in Uganda, as well as the Virunga Mountain. It is generally rare, only being common in a few threatened forests, that shows unexplained fluctuations in abundance.
The species is currently being researched in low density areas and of recent there was a very clear sighting of this bird in Ruhijja still part of Bwindi Impenetrable Forest as it was seen feeding from the ground for more than 3 minutes before it flew off, among them the Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nyungwe Forest Reserve in Rwanda, and Rwenzori Mountains National Park and Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda.
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
It has shown population decline over the past few decades, with a current population estimate of 1,000–2,499. The IUCN has proposed that researchers investigate declines and fluctuations in Shelley's crimsonwing population, in order to assess threats of extinction.
Shelley's crimsonwing 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 Shelley's crimsonwing, Wikidata item Q930263. 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.
