Lagonosticta senegala
Silhouette: Sheatherius · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~90% in a week >90%
The red-billed firefinch or Senegal firefinch (Lagonosticta senegala) is a small seed-eating bird in the family Estrildidae. This is a resident breeding bird in most of Sub-Saharan Africa with an estimated global extent of occurrence of 10,000,000 km2. It was introduced to Egypt, but the population there has become extinct. It was also introduced to southern Algeria where it is currently expanding northward.
In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the red-billed firefinch in his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected in Senegal. He used the French name Le Sénégali rouge and the Latin name Senegalus Ruber. Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson. One of these was the red-billed firefinch. Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name Fringilla senegala and cited Brisson's work. The species is now placed in the genus Lagonosticta...
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ouagadougou | 🇧🇫 Burkina Faso | |
| 2 | Serrekunda | 🇬🇲 Gambia | |
| 3 | Dakar | 🇸🇳 Senegal | |
| 4 | Mombasa | 🇰🇪 Kenya | |
| 5 | Maiduguri | 🇳🇬 Nigeria | |
| 6 | Nairobi | 🇰🇪 Kenya | |
| 7 | Addis Ababa | 🇪🇹 Ethiopia | |
| 8 | Kigali | 🇷🇼 Rwanda | |
| 9 | Harare | 🇿🇼 Zimbabwe | |
| 10 | Kampala | 🇺🇬 Uganda |
| # | Zoo / Centre | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | San Diego Zoo | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 2 | Skansen | 🇸🇪 Sweden | |
| 3 | Nuremberg Zoo | 🇩🇪 Germany | |
| 4 | Tiergarten Am Tiergarten 28 in Nürnberg | 🇩🇪 Germany | |
| 5 | Adelaide Zoo | 🇦🇺 Australia | |
| 6 | Hann Forest and Zoological Park | 🇸🇳 Senegal | |
| 7 | Zoo Boise | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 8 | Cambridge Butterfly Conservatory | 🇨🇦 Canada | |
| 9 | Helsingborgs Djur- och Lekpark | 🇸🇪 Sweden | |
| 10 | Baltic Sea Science Center | 🇸🇪 Sweden | |
| 11 | Key West Butterfly and Nature Conservatory | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 12 | Tiergarten Am Tiergarten 12 in Nürnberg | 🇩🇪 Germany | |
| 13 | Tiergarten Am Tiergarten 14 in Nürnberg | 🇩🇪 Germany | |
| 14 | Tiergarten Am Tiergarten 6 in Nürnberg | 🇩🇪 Germany | |
| 15 | Butterfly World | 🇺🇸 United States |
Likely
About 50% of wildlife watchers report a Red-billed Firefinch sighting in Mole National Park on a given day, based on 229 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 30th most-seen of the 266 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 90%, and over a week to over 90%, if each day is a fresh chance.
January and April
In those months about 60% of wildlife watchers report a Red-billed Firefinch in Mole National Park on a given day, against about 40% in August and December, the lowest months. Those are among Mole National Park's driest months, with about 25 mm of rain a month against 220 mm in August. July has too few records to rate.
Between 10 am and 1 pm
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Red-billed Firefinch sightings with a recorded time, and about 9 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
3rd of 45
Of the 45 parks where we can rate Red-billed Firefinch sightings, Mole National Park ranks 3rd at about 50%. The best odds are in Niokolo-Koba National Park (Senegal, about 60%) and Nairobi National Park (Kenya, about 50%). All parks ranked.
Same genus: Lagonosticta
The closest relatives of the Red-billed Firefinch that you can see in Mole National Park (genus Lagonosticta, Firefinches) are Bar-breasted Firefinch (about 20%) and Black-faced Firefinch (about 10%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Red-billed Firefinch is recorded against all the birds logged in Mole National Park (229 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.
