Current view: Data table and detailed info
Taxonomic note
Oriental White-eye Zosterops palpebrosus has been split into Indian White-eye Z. palpebrosus, Hume's White-eye Z. auriventer and Sangkar White-eye Z. melanurus on the basis of thorough morphological comparisons (Wells et al. 2017a, b) and genetic differentiation, morphology and vocalisations (Round et al. 2017, Lim et al. 2019).
The subspecies Z. m. buxtoni is here cautiously treated in line with Lim et al. (2019), who conclude: 'photographic evidence of populations in montane Sumatra strongly suggests the presence of a population of the montane species Hume’s White-eye, Zosterops auriventer … that has hitherto been misidentified (unpublished data), and we follow this preliminary evidence here in excluding montane Sumatran populations from the range of buxtoni.
Taxonomic source(s)
Handbook of the Birds of the World and BirdLife International. 2019. Handbook of the Birds of the World and BirdLife International digital checklist of the birds of the world. Version 4. Available at: https://datazone.birdlife.org/userfiles/file/Species/Taxonomy/HBW-BirdLife_Checklist_v4_Dec19.zip.
Lim, B.T., Sadanandan, K.R., Dingle, C., Leung, Y.Y., Prawiradilaga, D.M., Irham, M., Ashari, H., Lee, J.G. & Rheindt, F.E. 2019. Molecular evidence suggests radical revision of species limits in the great speciator white-eye genus Zosterops. Journal of Ornithology 160(1): 1-16.
IUCN Red List criteria met and history
Red List criteria met
Red List history
| Migratory status |
not a migrant |
Forest dependency |
medium |
| Land-mass type |
|
Average mass |
- |
Population justification: Quantitative population estimates do not exist for this species and, due to the presence of extensive trapping, a total population estimate cannot be calculated from population density estimates. However, the species is described as common on Java and Bali (Eaton et al. 2016). Weeklong ornithological surveys across 27 sites on nine mountains in West-Central Java between 2018 and 2020 for example found the species at 14 sites and on 7 mountains with a mean encounter rate of 0.39 groups/hour (range = 0.19 to 0.66 where present; C. Devenish, A. R. Junaid and S. Marsden in litt. 2020). During the ‘Big Month’ citizen science event (conducted in January 2020 comprising 22,054 checklists) across Java and Bali moreover, the species was recorded in 61 (0.77%) of the 7,935 tetrads (2 × 2 km squares) visited (T. Squires and S. Marsden in litt. 2020).
Trend justification: On the basis of the observed numbers in markets, it has been suggested that a '30% reduction in global population size over the past 10 years is a reasonable, if not conservative assumption' (Lim et al. 2019). As such, the species is assessed as having a decreasing population size. Judging the likely rate of population decline is difficult in this circumstance however. There are anecdotal reports of greatly reduced numbers at multiple sites across Java (including possibility of local extinction across Sukapua, Resmi Tinggal Village, Kertasari, and Bandung due to extensive trapping during 2009-2012; Akbar and van Balen 2020), where the species would be expected to be abundant (S. Mahood in litt. 2019; F. Rheindt in litt. 2019), coupled with inferred rising prices for the species in bird markets implying a reduction in availability and the strong impression that the numbers recorded in trade are far above a sustainable number (Lim et al. 2019). Symes et al. (2018) assigned probability curves according to expert opinion on trade desirability in conjunction with accessibility (based on a distance to forest edge from remote sensed forest data) to determine likely rates of population loss over the next three generation or ten year period: across the entire Sundaic range of the pre-split species, the estimated loss was 55%, but this analysis had no term to account for reproduction. While there is no direct data that can be used to estimate a rate of decline, it is suspected that a decline in excess of the threshold of 30% has been occurring over the past ten years, and this rate is not likely to diminish in the near future. There is a need for more field data that can be used to estimate the actual rate of decline, and for additional data to track numbers and prices at a sample of Javan markets.
Country/territory distribution
Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBA)
Recommended citation
BirdLife International (2024) Species factsheet: Sangkar White-eye Zosterops melanurus. Downloaded from
https://datazone.birdlife.org/species/factsheet/sangkar-white-eye-zosterops-melanurus on 22/12/2024.
Recommended citation for factsheets for more than one species: BirdLife International (2024) IUCN Red List for birds. Downloaded from
https://datazone.birdlife.org/species/search on 22/12/2024.
