Endangered
Pale-headed Brushfinch
Atlapetes pallidiceps
Pale-headed Brushfinch is a perching bird in the family Passerellidae (order Passeriformes) — Atlapetes pallidiceps, recorded as Endangered and tied to Ecuador.
The perching bird
Pale-headed Brushfinch is a perching bird in the family Passerellidae (order Passeriformes) — Atlapetes pallidiceps.
Range and habitat
Pale-headed Brushfinch inhabits a less than 4 km² area of the Yunguilla Valley, characterized by sparsely-vegetated landslide rifts and fallow fields at elevations between 1,650–1,900 meters. It is endemic to the Jubones River drainage in south-central Ecuador.
Upon the species' rediscovery, the population was very small, having only 12-22 breeding males across the Yunguilla Reserve in 1999.
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 pale-headed brushfinch is classified as endangered, with total population of the species estimated to be 240–340 individuals (160–226 mature individuals). This species has historically been heavily threatened by brood parasitism from the shiny cowbird (Molothrus bonariensis), with an estimated 38.5% of all A. Pallidiceps nests being parasitized. After a management plan that included mass culling of cowbirds, the population has increased by a magnitude of 5 times pre-intervention size.
Due to aggressive conservation management, the population rapidly increased to a peak size of 110-120 distinct, male-occupied territories in 2008.
Pale-headed Brushfinch 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 Pale-headed Brushfinch, Wikidata item Q2668298. 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.
