Java sparrow

Appearance

The Java sparrow is about 15 to 17 cm (5.9 to 6.7 in) in length from the beak to its tip of tail feathers. The adult is unmistakable, with its grey upperparts and breast, pink belly, white-cheeked black head, red eye-ring, pink feet and thick red bill. Immature birds have brown upperparts and pale brown underparts, and a plain head.

The mean body weight is 24.5 g (0.86 oz), making it slightly heavier than its nearest known rival, the black-bellied seedcracker.

Range and habitat

Java sparrow is recorded from Indonesia.

Habitat labels include meadow and grassland.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

Breeding

This species in the family Estrildidae is a resident breeding bird in Java, Bali, and Bawean in Indonesia.

In crisis

It is a popular cage bird, and has been introduced into many other countries. The Java sparrow is now evaluated as endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species with less than 10,000 individuals remaining. The species is also severely threatened by the illegal exotic pet trade as they are sought after for their distinctive song, according to TRAFFIC.

CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.

Java sparrow 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 Java sparrow, Wikidata item Q500278. 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.