Endangered
Teardrop White-eye
Rukia ruki
Teardrop White-eye is a perching bird in the family Zosteropidae (order Passeriformes) — Rukia ruki, recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
The teardrop white-eye, also known as the Faichuk white-eye, Truk white-eye, or great Truk white-eye, is a bird in the family Zosteropidae. Some advocate that it is the only true member of the genus Rukia, or the "great white-eyes".
Range and habitat
It is endemic to the summit of Mount Winipot on Tol, in the Faichuk group of islands within the Chuuk (Truk) atoll in Micronesia. Its habitat is montane rainforest dominated by the endemic Chuuk poisontree. Due to its restricted range on one small mountaintop and the locals' disdain for the native poisontree, it is severely threatened by habitat loss.
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
Teardrop White-eye 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 Teardrop White-eye, Wikidata item Q1591472. 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.
