Fawn-breasted waxbill
The fawn-breasted waxbill is a common species of estrildid finch found in central Africa. It has an estimated global extent of occurrence of 1,800,000 km2. Estrilda paludicola, E. ochrogaster and E. poliopareia have been lumped into E. paludicola.
Taxonomy
The fawn-breasted waxbill was formally described in 1863 by the German explorer and ornithologist Theodor von Heuglin from a specimen collected on the middle course of the Bahr el Ghazal River in South Sudan. He placed the species in the genus Estrilda and coined the binomial name Estrilda paludicola. The specific epithet paludicola is Latin meaning "marsh-dweller".Six subspecies are recognised:E. p. paludicola Heuglin, 1863 – east Central African Republic and north DR Congo to west KenyaE. p. roseicrissa Reichenow, 1892 – east DR Congo and southwest Uganda to northwest TanzaniaE. p. marwitzi Reichenow, 1900 – central south TanzaniaE. p. benguellensis Neumann, 1908 – Angola, south DR Congo and ZambiaE. p. ruthae Chapin, 1950 – central DR CongoE. p. ochrogaster Salvadori, 1897 – southeast Sudan and Ethiopia
The subspecies E. p. ochrogaster has sometimes been considered as a separate species, the Abyssinian waxbill.