Baya Weaver

Baya weaver is a sparrow like bird about 15 cm in size.Males and females bear non-breeding plumage that resembles them to house sparrows.Baya weaver have short square tail and stout conical bill.Bright yellow crown appears on breeding males whith dark brown mask, dark brown streaked upper parts while having cream buff below and yellow breast.Non-breeding birds look fulvous buff above with dark brown streak while whitish unstreaked eyebrows below. The Baya Weaver (Ploceus philippinus) has native range from South Asia to Southeast Asia. Their habitat is cultivated areas, grassland, scrub including secondary growths usually near fresh water or maybe brackish water.They are common in native distribution area and are widespread but they are disturbed by local seasonal movements. Baya weaver comes under least concerned category of IUCN.The justification of placing this specie into least concerned category of IUCN red list lies in the extremely vast range.As the criterion for vulnerability.The range of occurance should be less than 20,000 individual per KM².Moreover, it includes declining the size of range, destruction of habitat or fragmentation of the habitat.The criteria for vulnerability also includes more that 30% decline in the population within 10 years or three generations.The population size of baya weaver has not been exactly calculated in the world till now.Another parameter to declare the vulnerability of species is according the presence of mature individuals. There should be less than 10,000 mature individuals and more than 10% are declining every 10 years or 3 generations.Local threats to baya weaver based on personal observations include habitat destruction due to different reasons including urbanization, destruction of water bodies, cutting of vegetation especially present at the side of water bodies.As this bird make hanging nests on the steeping branches of trees over water bodies, cutting of trees during widening of Lahore canal has resulted in decline of population due to habitat destruction.