Streaky-headed seedeater
species of bird
The streaky-headed seedeater or streaky-headed canary (Crithagra gularis) is a small passerine bird in the finch family. It is an unobtrusive but widespread species in suitable habitats of southern Africa. Its presence in an area is revealed foremost by its callnotes.
Taxonomy
The streaky-headed seedeater was formerly placed in the genus Serinus but phylogenetic analysis using mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequences found that the genus was polyphyletic. The genus was therefore split and a number of species including the streaky-headed seedeater were moved to the resurrected genus Crithagra.
There are five recognized subspecies, differing mainly in the colour shade of the upperparts and underparts. C. g. humilis of the southwestern Cape has dusky plumage and indistinctly streaked upperparts.
Crithagra gularis benguellensis (Reichenow, 1904) — n Namibia, s Angola
Crithagra gularis endemion (Clancey, 1952) — Lesotho, Eswatini, e South Africa, s Mozambique
Crithagra gularis gularis (Smith, A, 1836) — n South Africa, sw Botswana, s Zimbabwe
Crithagra gularis humilis (Bonaparte, 1850) — s South Africa
Crithagra gularis mendosa (Clancey, 1966) — nw Botswana, Zimbabwe, c Mozambique, s Zambia
Some authorities consider the West African seedeater (Crithagra canicapilla) as a subspecies of the streaky-headed seedeater. C. (g.) elgonensis, an isolated taxon occurring sparsely in the dry, eastern Ugandan woodlands and at Mt Elgon in Kenya, may be conspecific with either the West African seedeater or stripe-breasted seedeater.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Streaky-headed seedeater” is species of bird. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Streaky-headed, seedeater and species, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Streaky-headed seedeater” 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.