Chestnut Munia

Lonchura atricapilla (Vieillot, 1807)

≈11 cmLength12 gWeight

This small, social bird has a black head and rufous body, with a brick-red patch on the lower back visible in flight.

Busiest months: March–May and October · Most records: China, Malaysia, Philippines

Least Concern

How to identify

Field marks

Head black, body rufous
Bill short and stout, pale gray-blue
Brick-red patch on the lower back visible in flight
Belly also black in some subspecies

Male, female and young

Sexes similar; the juvenile has uniformly pale rufous upperparts, no dark head, and white to pale rufous underparts.

Where and when it's recorded

Chestnut Munia has been recorded at 455 of the 8,171 birding hotspots we track, in 21 countries and regions.

Records by month Northern Hemisphere

Where it's recorded most

Taipei – Tianliaoyang WetlandTaiwan (China)1,722 records
Sepilok – Rainforest Discovery CenterMalaysia752 records
Marina EastSingapore666 records

More places

Hualien River Estuary IBATaiwan (China)630 records
Lanyang River Estuary IBA – XinnanTaiwan (China)612 records
Candaba MarshPhilippines589 records
Hualien – Fenglin BeilinTaiwan (China)522 records
Lat Krabang – Thap Yao paddies & aquaculture pondsThailand521 records
Yilan – Dingliao Ecological ParkTaiwan (China)452 records
Huajiang IBA – Huajiang Wild Duck Nature Park (Huajiang to Zhongxing Bridge)Taiwan (China)442 records

Countries and regions with the most records

China Malaysia Philippines Thailand Singapore Bangladesh Cambodia Indonesia

eBird records via GBIF up to 2024-12-31. A record means someone listed it; more records partly mean more birders, not more birds.

About

The chestnut munia or black-headed munia (Lonchura atricapilla) is a small passerine. It was formerly considered conspecific with the closely related tricoloured munia, but is now widely accepted as a separate species. This estrildid finch is a resident breeding bird in Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Burma, Nepal, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan (China), Thailand, Vietnam and Hawaii.

Excerpt from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0 · authors · Read more on Wikipedia