Tag Archives: Rhipidura rufifrons

Rhipidura rufifrons ssp. uraniae Oustalet

Guam Rufous Fantail (Rhipidura rufifrons ssp. uraniae)

The Guam Rufous Fantail is one of the victims of the Brown Tree Snake (Boiga irregularis (Merrem in Bechstein)), a snake species that was introduced to Guam probably sometimes during the 1940s resulting in the devastating loss of nearly all native bird species.

Like so many other bird species from guam, this one was last seen during the 1985s, it is now extinct.

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The Rufous Fantail (Rhipidura rufifrons (Latham)), if treated as a single species, occurs from eastern Australia to New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and parts of Micronesia; however, this species is a candidate for splitting, which would lead to the Guam Rufous Fantail being treated as a distinct, monotypic species, while the other two remaining subspecies found in the Mariana Islands today (the one from Saipan Island is depicted below) would be regarded to as another, closely related one.

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The name that the Chamorro, the native inhabitans of the Mariana Islands, gave this bird is Chichirika, this name is now apparently used for the Eurasian Tree Sparow (Passer montanus (L.)), a species that was imported to the Mariana Islands.

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Saipan Rufous Fantail (Rhipidura rufifrons ssp. saipanensis Hartert)

Photo: Peter

(under creative commons license (2.0))
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

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edited: 30.10.2020