Habitat
Subtropical and tropical montane moist forest, lowland dry shrubland, lowland seasonally wet / flooded grassland, dry savanna. From sea-level - 1,800 m, occasionally up to 2,420 m.
African Firefinch (Lagonosticta rubricata) [XC370706]
by James Bradley from Grahamstown, Western District, Eastern Cape, South Africa (song)
African Firefinch (Lagonosticta rubricata) [XC658253]
by Dawie de Swardt from Mandegee farm, oloitoktok, Kenya (call, flight call)
Subspecies
African Firefinch (Lagonosticta rubricata) and Landana Firefinch (Lagonosticta landanae) (Sibley and Monroe 1990, 1993) are retained as separate species contra Dowsett and Forbes-Watson (1993) who include landanae as a subspecies of African Firefinch (Lagonosticta rubricata).
Subspecies landanae often treated as a separate species, on basis mainly of reddish bill colour. Most other subspecies intergrade with one another, although nominate not known to intergrade with haematocephala.
Proposed subspecies neglecta (described from Guinea-Bissau), named on basis of red cheeks of female, considered untenable; treated as a synonym of polionota; ugandae (described from Fort Portal, in Uganda) synonymized with congica.
The following 5 subspecies are recognised:
polionota Shelley, 1873 - Southern Senegal, south-western Mali, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone and northern Liberia east to Nigeria.
congica Sharpe, 1890 - Cameroon east to southern Sudan, north-eastern DRCongo (Uele, Kivu) and western Uganda, south to Gabon and northern and north-eastern Angola.
haematocephala Neumann, 1907 - Eastern Africa from Sudan east of R Nile, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Kenya Highlands south to Zambia, Malawi, highlands of eastern Zimbabwe, coastal Tanzania and northern and central Mozambique (north of R Save).
landanae Sharpe, 1890 - Cabinda and lower Congo River to north-western Angola and southern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Considered by some authors to be a distinct species, Landana Firefinch (Lagonosticta landanae).
rubricata (Lichtenstein, 1823) - Northern and eastern South Africa, Swaziland and southern Mozambique (south of R Save).