Critically Endangered
Mauritius olive white-eye
Zosterops chloronothos
The Mauritius olive white-eye (Mauritius olive white-eye, often mistakenly spelled Zosterops chloronothus) is a very rare and localized passerine from the family of white-eyes (Zosteropidae).
Appearance
The upperparts are a dull olive-green, the underparts a paler color. The belly and vent have a yellow hue and the eyes are surrounded by a conspicuous white ring. The males and females are similarly coloured.
It can reach a size of about 10 cm (3.9 in).
Description This species was first described in 1817 by French ornithologist Louis Pierre Vieillot as Mauritius olive white-eye.
Range and habitat
It is one of two white-eye species endemic to the island of Mauritius, the other being the Mauritius grey white-eye.
First, so the eggs wouldn't be eaten, and secondly, so that when they grow, they can be released on predator-free islands. When the birds have finally adapted to that, they are freed on a predator-free island, the Ile aux Aigrettes, where they have started to reproduce.
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
The main threats are introduced rats and crab-eating macaques, that destroy the nests. In only 27 years the population declined dramatically from 350 pairs in 1975 to only 120 pairs in 2002.
Mauritius olive white-eye 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 Mauritius olive white-eye, Wikidata item Q1761519. 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.
