The American Ornithological Society has determined that a bullfinch found on Grand Cayman and Cuba is, in fact, two separate species, and has awarded them both endemic status, meaning they are unique to those two islands.
The Grand Cayman bullfinch bears the name ‘Melopyrrha taylori’.
According to a press release from the National Trust for the Cayman Islands, the American Ornithological Society announced this month that the species Cuban Bullfinch (Melopyrrha nigra), previously recognised as two endemic sub-species on Cuba and Grand Cayman, has been split into two endemic species.
“The decision was a belated response to an ornithological paper submitted in 2014 by four authors from Cuba and two from the Cayman Islands,” the National Trust stated.
The endemic split had already been recognised by other world ornithological councils.
The bullfinch is now the only endemic bird in the Cayman Islands, though endemic sub-species do exist here. The only other modern endemic bird, the Grand Cayman thrush, was last spotted in 1938 and is considered extinct.
The National Trust noted that up until the 1980s, the bullfinch was widespread throughout Grand Cayman, but intense development in the western side of the island has resulted in the bird being found exclusively east of Newlands nowadays.
In the 1970s, Gary Morgan identified fossil bones of this species – believed to date from 13,000 years ago – from caves on Cayman Brac.
The Trust noted that the bullfinch was first collected on Grand Cayman for museums on 12 Aug. 1886 by W. B. Richardson for ornithologist Charles B. Cory. He identified it as ‘Melopyrrha nigra’, the same species that occurred on Cuba.
The Grand Cayman bullfinch was listed as ‘near threatened’ in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) list of threatened species in 2020, which estimates that there is a population of about 10,000 in Grand Cayman, with numbers decreasing.
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