Red-vented bulbul
species of bird
The red-vented bulbul (Pycnonotus cafer) is a member of the bulbul family of passerines. It is a resident breeder across South Asia extending east to Burma. It has been introduced in many other parts of the world and has established itself in Argentina, Tonga and Fiji, as well as parts of Samoa, USA and Cook Islands. It is included in the list of the world's 100 worst invasive alien species. In New Zealand they were the target of a successful extermination campaign in 1955, however they are still sporadically reported.
Taxonomy and systematics
In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the red-vented bulbul in his Ornithologie based on a specimen that he mistakenly believed had been collected from the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. He used the French name Le merle hupé du Cap de Bonne Espérance and the Latin Merula Cristata Capitis Bonae Spei. Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson. One of these was the red-vented bulbul.
“Red-vented bulbul” enters the record as species of bird. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Red-vented, bulbul and species can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Red-vented bulbul” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Red-vented, bulbul and species provides the most credible route into that argument.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q509455. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1955, 1760 and 1766.
Current terminology should not be projected backward without checking the classification used when the underlying evidence was created. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Red-vented bulbul” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.