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Red-faced crimsonwing

species of bird

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 21, 2026
Entity authorityQ1077291 ↗
Source-derived summary

The red-faced crimsonwing (Cryptospiza reichenovii) is a common species of estrildid finch found in Africa. It has an estimated global extent of occurrence of 390,000 km2.

It is native to the Afromontane.

Taxonomy

The red-faced crimsonwing was formally described in 1874 by the German ornithologist Gustav Hartlaub based on a female specimen that had been collected by Anton Reichenow near Bondongo (Bonjongo) in west Cameroon, West Africa. Hartlaub coined the binomial name Pytelia reichenovii where the specific epithet was chosen to honour the collector. The red-faced crimsonwing is now one of four species placed in the genus Cryptospiza that was introduced in 1884 by the Italian zoologist Tommaso Salvadori.

Three subspecies are recognised:

C. r. reichenovii (Hartlaub, 1874) – Western High Plateau and Bioko

C. r. ocularis Sharpe, 1902 – Albertine Rift montane forests

C. r.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Red-faced crimsonwing” is species of bird. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Red-faced, crimsonwing and species, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewUseful for establishing the present vocabulary of the subject while preserving a route back to the evidence on which that vocabulary rests. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1874, 1884, 1902—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Red-faced, crimsonwing and species is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “species of bird” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1077291. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1874, 1884 and 1902.

Critical limits

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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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Red-faced crimsonwing” 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.