Lagonosticta senegala
Silhouette: Sheatherius · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~70% 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... Wikipedia →
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ouagadougou | 🇧🇫 Burkina Faso | |
| 2 | Serrekunda | 🇬🇲 Gambia | |
| 3 | Mombasa | 🇰🇪 Kenya | |
| 4 | Dakar | 🇸🇳 Senegal | |
| 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 |
Possible
About 30% of wildlife watchers report a Red-billed Firefinch sighting in Virunga National Park on a given day, based on 138 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 11th most-seen of the 316 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 70%, and over a week to about 90%, if each day is a fresh chance.
December
In that month about 50% of wildlife watchers report a Red-billed Firefinch in Virunga National Park on a given day, against about 10% in February, the lowest month. That is one of Virunga National Park's driest months, with about 80 mm of rain against 250 mm in May.
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.
12th of 43
Of the 43 parks where we can rate Red-billed Firefinch sightings, Virunga National Park ranks 12th at about 30%. The best odds are in Niokolo-Koba National Park (Senegal, about 60%), Nairobi National Park (Kenya, about 50%) and Akagera National Park (Rwanda, about 50%). All parks ranked.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Red-billed Firefinch is recorded against all the birds logged in Virunga National Park (138 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.
