Occurrence of Tricoloured Munia ( Lonchura malacca) in Karur District, Tamil
Nadu

Deepan. R1* , Vikram. B1, Harish.B1, Ramakrishnan. B2 and A. Samson2
Page No. 79-80

The tricoloured munia (Lonchura malacca) is an estrildid finch, native to Bangladesh, India, Sri
Lanka and southern China. It is a small gregarious bird and feeds mainly on grain and other seeds. It
dwells in wet grassland habitats and also be found in tropical lowland moist forest habitats. Karur
District is located center along the Kaveri and Amaravathi rivers in Tamil Nadu, India. It is bounded
by Namakkal district in the north, Dindigul district in the south, Tiruchirapalli district on the east
and Erode district on the west. It has an area of 2896 sq.km. On 18th September 10:30 AM we
recorded two individuals of birds perching on the high-tension power line near Karur village (N
10.88073o E 77.97143o Elevation 143 MSL). We take photographs for further identification of the
species the bird was identified as tricoloured munia using descriptions in Grimmet et al. (2).
Salahudeen et al. (1) had made a first report on avian faunal diversity in three selected areas of
Karur District. In that study a total of 67 birds were recorded. The present record of tricoloured
munia shows new addition fauna of the Karur district.