Melopyrrha nigra
Silhouette: Sheatherius · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~50% in a week ~80%
The Cuban bullfinch (Melopyrrha nigra) is a Near Threatened species of bird in the family Thraupidae, the tanagers and allies. It is endemic to Cuba. The Cuban bullfinch has a complicated taxonomic history. It was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Loxia nigra. Linnaeus based his short description on Mark Catesby's "The Little Black Bullfinch" and Eleazar Albin's "Black Bullfinch ". The type location is Cuba. The specific epithet nigra is Latin meaning "black".
By 1970 the Cuban bullfinch had been assigned to the genus Melopyrrha that had been introduced in 1853 by the French naturalist Charles Lucien Bonaparte. While most taxonomic systems retained it in Melopyrrha, in 2016 BirdLife International's Handbook of the Birds of the World (HBW) moved it to genus Pyrrhulagra. In 2022 it moved it back to Melopyrrha. The Cuban bullfinch is now one of five species in Melopyrrha.
The Cuban bullfinch is monotypic. What is now the Grand Cayman bullfinch (M. taylori) was treated as a subspecies but was recognized as a full species by 2023. The Cuban... Wikipedia →
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ciénaga de Zapata | 🇨🇺 Cuba |
More parks will be added in future updates.
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Havana | 🇨🇺 Cuba |
Possible
About 20% of wildlife watchers report a Cuban Bullfinch sighting in Ciénaga de Zapata on a given day, based on 281 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 80th most-seen of the 177 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 50%, and over a week to about 80%, if each day is a fresh chance.
January and March
In those months about 30% of wildlife watchers report a Cuban Bullfinch in Ciénaga de Zapata on a given day, against about 10% in May–August and October–November, the lowest months. Those are among Ciénaga de Zapata's driest months, with about 20 mm of rain a month against 150 mm in June. September has too few records to rate.
Between 8 and 11 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Cuban Bullfinch sightings with a recorded time, and about 9 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
Only Ciénaga de Zapata, in our data
Ciénaga de Zapata is the only park on Wallace's Line with enough records to rate Cuban Bullfinch sightings: about 20% of wildlife watchers there report one on a given day.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Cuban Bullfinch is recorded against all the birds logged in Ciénaga de Zapata (281 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
