Endangered
Saint Lucia Black Finch
Melanospiza richardsoni
Saint Lucia Black Finch is a perching bird in the family Thraupidae (order Passeriformes) — Melanospiza richardsoni, recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
It is a stocky finch-like bird with a thick bill and a shortish tail. Adult males are almost entirely deep black except for the slate-colored undersides of the primaries. Their upperparts, wings, and tail are brown and their underparts light brown.
The Saint Lucia black finch is 13 to 14 cm (5.1 to 5.5 in) long and weighs 18 to 23 g (0.63 to 0.81 oz).
Published measurements include mass about 20.
Range and habitat
The Saint Lucia black finch is endemic to the island of Saint Lucia in the south-central Lesser Antilles. It inhabits tropical evergreen forest and secondary forest, where it favors somewhat moist areas with dense undergrowth, though it also is found in semi-arid forest. It is endemic to Saint Lucia.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
The Saint Lucia black finch's diet has not been studied but is assumed to be arthropods, fruits, and seeds. It forages mostly among leaf litter on the ground in dense vegetation.
The Saint Lucia black finch breeds between November and June. Its nest is a loose sphere with a side entrance, made from leaves, twigs, and other plant materials.
In crisis
Saint Lucia Black Finch 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 Saint Lucia Black Finch, Wikidata item Q1589875. 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.
