Abstract
This work focused on monitoring the reproductive phenology of the chaffinch Fringilla coelebs africana for two successive seasons (2016 and 2017) in the mountains of the El Kala National Park (North East Algeria). We searched for nests in the tree stratum or by direct observation of breeding pairs carrying building materials from mid-March to the end of June and found a total of 34 nests that were measured without affecting the breeding process. The results show that nests were built at an average height of 6.3m from the ground. The laying period was 46 days (Early April to mid-May) and the average laying date was May 2. The mean of clutch size is 3.2 eggs per brood. All the previous traits are similar to those recorded in Europe. The mean hatching success rate was 43.1% and the average breeding success rate was 36.3%. These two values are relatively low compared to those found in European populations.
Highlights
The family Fringillidae has 31 species in the Western Palearctic (Beaman and Madge, 1998)
The subspecies of chaffinch Fringilla coelebs africana builds its nest on branches or several thin twigs (Heim De Balsac, 1926; Etchecopar and Hüe, 1964; Cramp and Perrins, 1994; Ramdani, 2007) in diverse habitats: trees, hedges (Macleod et al, 2014), and olive shrubs (Mestari et al, 2013)
We found that the nest building material in our region was generally similar to that described for Europe (Cramp and Perrins, 1994) and Algeria (Ramdani, 2007)
Summary
The family Fringillidae has 31 species in the Western Palearctic (Beaman and Madge, 1998) They are small or relatively small granivorous birds with short, strong beaks and generally undulating flight and sexual dimorphism (Cramp and Perrins, 1994; Beaman and Madge, 1998). Among these species is the chaffinch Fringilla coelebs africana, which nests in North Africa. This species, like other Fringillidae, nests either in 'loose colonies' or solitary, but it is not territorial (Newton, 1967)
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