The Afghan snowfinch (''Pyrgilauda theresae'') or the Afghan ground-sparrow, bar-tailed snowfinch, Meinertzhagen's snowfinch, or Theresa's snowfinch, is a
passerine
A passerine () is any bird of the order Passeriformes (; from Latin 'sparrow' and '-shaped'), which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds, passerines are distinguished from other orders of birds by t ...
bird of the
sparrow family Passeridae,
endemic
Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...
to the northern parts of the
Hindu Kush
The Hindu Kush is an mountain range in Central and South Asia to the west of the Himalayas. It stretches from central and western Afghanistan, Quote: "The Hindu Kush mountains run along the Afghan border with the North-West Frontier Provinc ...
mountains in Afghanistan. There are no major threats to the species despite its restricted range, so it is assessed as
least concern
A least-concern species is a species that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as evaluated as not being a focus of species conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wild. T ...
on the
IUCN Red List
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, also known as the IUCN Red List or Red Data Book, founded in 1964, is the world's most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of biol ...
. This species is mostly a
seed-eater, supplementing its diet with some
insects
Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body (head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs of j ...
. It builds its nest in the burrows or hollows of ground-dwelling
rodent
Rodents (from Latin , 'to gnaw') are mammals of the order Rodentia (), which are characterized by a single pair of continuously growing incisors in each of the upper and lower jaws. About 40% of all mammal species are rodents. They are na ...
s, lined with hair or feathers.
Taxonomy and systematics
This species was first scientifically recorded relatively late, by
Richard Meinertzhagen
Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, CBE, DSO (3 March 1878 – 17 June 1967) was a British soldier, intelligence officer, and ornithologist. He had a decorated military career spanning Africa and the Middle East. He was credited with creating and e ...
on a 1937 expedition with
Salim Ali
Sálim Moizuddin Abdul Ali (12 November 1896 – 20 June 1987) was an Indian ornithologist and naturalist. Sometimes referred to as the "''Birdman of India''", Salim Ali was the first Indian to conduct systematic bird surveys across Indi ...
. Meinertzhagen formally described the species in ''
Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club
The ''Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club'' is an ornithological journal published by the British Ornithologists' Club (BOC). It is cited as ''Bull. B. O. C.''
Many descriptions of birds new to science have been published in the bulleti ...
'' paper later that year, and gave it the
binomial name
In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...
''Montifringilla theresae''. He reported that he collected the
type specimen
In biology, a type is a particular wiktionary:en:specimen, specimen (or in some cases a group of specimens) of an organism to which the scientific name of that organism is formally attached. In other words, a type is an example that serves to a ...
of the species in the
Shibar Pass
Shibar Pass (''Kowtal-e Shibar'') in Afghanistan is situated at a height of above sea-level, connecting Parwan Province with Bamyan Province. It is the longer of the two main routes from Kabul to Bamiyan. The journey is approximately 6 and half ...
, between
Bamyan
Bamyan or Bamyan Valley (); ( prs, بامیان) also spelled Bamiyan or Bamian is the capital of Bamyan Province in central Afghanistan. Its population of approximately 70,000 people makes it the largest city in Hazarajat. Bamyan is at an alti ...
and
Kabul
Kabul (; ps, , ; , ) is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Located in the eastern half of the country, it is also a municipality, forming part of the Kabul Province; it is administratively divided into 22 municipal districts. Acco ...
.
[ The name he gave the species was after his cousin and companion, ]Theresa Clay
Theresa Rachel "Tess" Clay (7 February 1911 – 17 March 1995) was an English entomologist. She was introduced to zoology by her older relative, the ornithologist and adventurer Richard Meinertzhagen, with whom she had an unusually close relati ...
, an expert on bird lice
A bird louse is any chewing louse (small, biting insects) of order Phthiraptera which parasitizes warm-blooded animals, especially birds. Bird lice may feed on feathers, skin, or blood. They have no wings, and their biting mouth parts distingui ...
. While Meinertzhagen described several dozen species and subspecies
In biological classification, subspecies is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (morphology), but that can successfully interbreed. Not all species ...
(including others named after Clay), he was later found to have stolen specimens and falsified records, and this may be the only verifiably genuine taxon he described.
Meinertzhagen placed this species in the genus ''Montifringilla
''Montifringilla'' is a genus of passerine birds in the sparrow family Passeridae. It is one of three genera containing the snowfinches. As the English and scientific names suggest, these are high-altitude species, found in the mountain ranges of ...
'', which some classifications continue to place it in, along with about eight species of 'snowfinches'.[ Among these species, it is most similar to ]Blanford's snowfinch
Blanford's snowfinch (''Pyrgilauda blanfordi'') or the plain-backed snowfinch, is a species of bird in the sparrow family.
It is found in China, India, Nepal, and Pakistan. Its natural habitat is temperate grassland.
The species epithet and co ...
, which has similar plumage and essentially the same nesting habits.[ Some authors split this species, Blanford's snowfinch, and the other snowfinches of southern and central Asia as the genus ''Pyrgilauda'', on the basis that their morphological traits, as well as habitat and ecology, are substantially different. (This is an arbitrary distinction, as there can be little doubt that ''Montifringilla'' in the broad sense is ]monophyletic
In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic gro ...
.) One of the more prominent works to follow this classification recently, the ''Handbook of the Birds of the World
The ''Handbook of the Birds of the World'' (HBW) is a multi-volume series produced by the Spanish publishing house Lynx Edicions in partnership with BirdLife International. It is the first handbook to cover every known living species of bird. T ...
'', called the species of their genus ''Pyrgilauda'' 'ground-sparrows', on account of their different habitat and behaviour from the northern 'snowfinches'. No subspecies have been described.[
]
Description
It is long, weighing . The wingspan ranges from , and bills measure from . Females are slightly smaller on average than males.[
The male is grey-brown with some white in the wings and a black face-mask and two-pronged patch on the throat. The female is a buff-tinged brown, with a weaker, greyer face mask and less white in the wings. There are short dark streaks on the mantle and a white subterminal band on the tail feathers other than the central pair. There is white on the upperwing coverts, secondaries, and inner primaries. The male has a brick red iris.][ The plumage of juvenile birds after fledging has not been described, but can be assumed to be similar to the female's plumage.][
The only similar species that occur in the Afghan snowfinch's range are the ]white-winged snowfinch
The white-winged snowfinch (''Montifringilla nivalis''), or snowfinch, is a small passerine bird. Despite its name, it is a sparrow rather than a true finch.
Taxonomy
In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description o ...
and the desert finch
The desert finch (''Rhodospiza obsoleta''), sometimes called Lichtenstein's desert finch, is a large brown true finch found in southern Eurasia. Its taxonomy is confused, and it has formerly been placed in ''Fringilla'', '' Bucanetes'', ''Cardu ...
. It can be distinguished from the former by the smaller white patches on the wings and an overall more brownish plumage. While it is similar in general appearance to the latter species, the Afghan snowfinch is more streaked, has stronger facial markings, and has a smaller bill, among other differences.[
The flight of the Afghan snowfinch is heavy and straight. The alarm call is a sharp ', and they make soft ' calls in flight, and a stridulant '.]
Distribution and habitat
The Afghan snowfinch is the only species of bird known to be endemic to Afghanistan. It is found only in some northern parts of the Hindu Kush
The Hindu Kush is an mountain range in Central and South Asia to the west of the Himalayas. It stretches from central and western Afghanistan, Quote: "The Hindu Kush mountains run along the Afghan border with the North-West Frontier Provinc ...
mountains, where it occurs at elevations of . Besides the Shibar Pass, it is known from Deh Sabz and Unai Pass
The Unai Pass or Onai Pass is a mountain pass on the western side of the Paghman Mountains in Jalrez District, Maidan Wardak Province, Afghanistan. It is of strategical importance due to its geographical location to the southwest of Kabul. The ...
, and a few other localities between 67° and 69° E in the northerly ranges of the Hindu Kush. This species disperses in the winter especially after heavy snowfalls, and moves slightly beyond its breeding range, into lower altitudes and northwards into Badghis Province
Bādghīs (Dari: ) is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan, located in the northwest of the country, on the border with Turkmenistan. It is considered to be one of the country's most underdeveloped provinces, with the highest poverty r ...
. It has been recorded on occasion as a vagrant
Vagrancy is the condition of homelessness without regular employment or income. Vagrants (also known as bums, vagabonds, rogues, tramps or drifters) usually live in poverty and support themselves by begging, scavenging, petty theft, temporar ...
in southern Turkmenistan
Turkmenistan ( or ; tk, Türkmenistan / Түркменистан, ) is a country located in Central Asia, bordered by Kazakhstan to the northwest, Uzbekistan to the north, east and northeast, Afghanistan to the southeast, Iran to the sout ...
. Its habitats are stony mountain slopes, plateaux, and open hillsides in the passes.[
Despite having a relatively small range and population, it is not thought to have an unstable population or significant threats, so it is assessed as a species of ]least concern
A least-concern species is a species that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as evaluated as not being a focus of species conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wild. T ...
on the IUCN Red List
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, also known as the IUCN Red List or Red Data Book, founded in 1964, is the world's most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of biol ...
. This species is among those protected by Band-e Amir National Park
__NOTOC__
Band-e Amir National Park ( fa, بند امیر) Afghanistan established its first national park on April 22, 2009, to promote and protect the natural beauty of a series of intensely blue lakes created by natural dams high in the Hindu ...
, Afghanistan's first national park, which encompasses a large area of the Hindu Kush near Bamyan.
Behaviour and ecology
In winter, the Afghan snowfinch forms large flocks of dozens or hundreds, sometimes mixed with snowfinches of other species, rock sparrow
The rock sparrow or rock petronia (''Petronia petronia'') is a small passerine bird in the sparrow family Passeridae. It is the only member of the genus ''Petronia''. It breeds on barren rocky hills from the Iberian peninsula and western north A ...
s, and various lark
Larks are passerine birds of the family Alaudidae. Larks have a cosmopolitan distribution with the largest number of species occurring in Africa. Only a single species, the horned lark, occurs in North America, and only Horsfield's bush lark occu ...
s. This species feeds mostly on small seeds, from plants such as '' Carex pachystylis'', '' Convolvulus divaricatus'', and '' Thuspeinantha persica'', and it will also eat insects such as ant
Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from vespoid wasp ancestors in the Cretaceous period. More than 13,800 of an estimated total of 22 ...
s and weevil
Weevils are beetles belonging to the Taxonomic rank, superfamily Curculionoidea, known for their elongated snouts. They are usually small, less than in length, and Herbivore, herbivorous. Approximately 97,000 species of weevils are known. They b ...
s.[
The Afghan snowfinch builds ]nest
A nest is a structure built for certain animals to hold eggs or young. Although nests are most closely associated with birds, members of all classes of vertebrates and some invertebrates construct nests. They may be composed of organic materia ...
s in the burrows and hollows made by rodents, including ground squirrel
Ground squirrels are members of the squirrel family of rodents (Sciuridae), which generally live on or in the ground, rather than trees. The term is most often used for the medium-sized ground squirrels, as the larger ones are more commonly known ...
s, marmot
Marmots are large ground squirrels in the genus ''Marmota'', with 15 species living in Asia, Europe, and North America. These herbivores are active during the summer, when they can often be found in groups, but are not seen during the winter, w ...
s, and in one recorded case Williams' jerboa (''Allactaga williamsi''). In particular, it is associated with the yellow ground squirrel
The yellow ground squirrel (''Spermophilus fulvus'') is a large and sturdy ground squirrel species native to Afghanistan, China, Iran, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Russia. It inhabits sandy steppes with Artemisia, glasswort and tamari ...
(''Spermophilus fulvus''). Several of the other southern snowfinch species have similar nesting preferences, as does at least one species that occurs in the Afghan snowfinch's range, the isabelline wheatear. The materials used to line the burrows it nests in are the hairs of squirrels, sheep
Sheep or domestic sheep (''Ovis aries'') are domesticated, ruminant mammals typically kept as livestock. Although the term ''sheep'' can apply to other species in the genus ''Ovis'', in everyday usage it almost always refers to domesticated s ...
, and dromedaries
The dromedary (''Camelus dromedarius'' or ;), also known as the dromedary camel, Arabian camel, or one-humped camel, is a large even-toed ungulate, of the genus ''Camelus'', with one hump on its back.
It is the tallest of the three species of ...
; and feather
Feathers are epidermal growths that form a distinctive outer covering, or plumage, on both avian (bird) and some non-avian dinosaurs and other archosaurs. They are the most complex integumentary structures found in vertebrates and a premier ...
s. Nests are built at the far end of the burrows, as protection from predators. The young hatch blind and helpless, with exposed pink skin and only a few, light-coloured tufts of down. Young give a soft call in response to adults calling at the entrance of a nest.[
]
References
Works cited
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External links
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{{Taxonbar, from=Q27075723
Birds described in 1937
Birds of Afghanistan
Endemic fauna of Afghanistan
Pyrgilauda