Monday, September 22, 2014

Annotated checklist of vagrant Munias (Family: Estrildidae) recorded in Sri Lanka

Birds that appear outside their normal range are known as vagrants. This post summarizes up to date published sight records of vagrants of the family Estrildidae (Munias & allies) in Sri Lanka.

Chestnut Munia (Lonchura atricapilla)
While including this bird to his country list base on a remark made by Layard that he found this Munia at GalleLegge suspected that its presence in the Galle district must have been owing to a flock escaped from a ship at Galle harbor (Legge 1880 : 850). However during 1977-1981 pest species survey it was seen by Dr Sarath Kotagama in the Hingurana and Udawalawe areas and again recorded at Ridiyagama by A.J. Vincent (Kotagama S. & Ratnavira G. 2010:.318)

References:
Kotagama, S., Ratnavira, G. 2010. An illustrated Guide to the Birds of Sri Lanka. Field Ornithology Group of Sri Lanka, Colombo.
Legge V., 1880. A History of the birds of Ceylon  1983 second edition.




1 comment:

  1. As per Mr. Jagath Gunawardana inclusion of this bird in Sri Lankan checklist is an issue.Some of the Black-headed Munias(L.malaccca) show the chestnut underparts and hence could be mistaken as L.atricapilla.In 1991,Mr.Deepal Warakagoda found two specimens in pet shops which,upon measuring their bio-metrics,were found to be variants of the Black-headed Manias. Mr. Jagath Gunawardana also found such individuals,both in the field and in pet shops at the time.

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