This is a picture of a warbling Swinhoe's White-eye in our front garden. It is native to East Asia, which is why it was formerly known as the Japanese white-eye, but apparently several of them got loose from a nearby zoo in 1980 and found the climate favorable. They were fruitful and multiplied, and now they can be spotted all over the place in Southern California. Including our front garden now and again.
Yet another invasive species…
Cool pic.
This is now Swinhoe's White-eye (Zosterops simplex), having been split off from Japanese/Warbling White-eye (Z. japonicus) in 2018, based on genetic studies.
When they first escaped, the number was small enough that there was a decent chance of eradicating them, but the outcry* was too much, and now we're stuck with them. People just don't understand exponential growth.
*Probably from much the same crowd that thinks that TNR is a solution to the feral cat problem, ironically enough.
I forgot to mention: You can see Japanese/Warbling White-eyes in Hawaiʻi, where they're also introduced and very common.
Swinhoe's? Hasn't he been found out to have been a racist yet?
(Yes, I'm kidding. In the current climate, seems like nothing should be named after any person, ever, lest changing mores reveal them as somehow unacceptable. To be honest, I'm all for the Linnean model where the scientific name was actually descriptive.)
Nice shot.
Has to wear those tiny glasses because of all the chlorine in the air.