Vietnamese Greenfinch

The Vietnamese greenfinch (Chloris monguilloti) is a small passerine bird in the family Fringillidae. It is found only in Đà Lạt Plateau of southern Vietnam. Its natural habitat is open montane pine forest and scrubland. It is threatened by habitat loss. Taxonomy The first formal description of the Vietnamese greenfinch was by the American ornithologist Jean Théodore Delacour in 1926 under the binomial name Hypacanthis monguilloti. (Wikipedia, general species account).

In the past the greenfinches were placed in the genus Carduelis but when molecular phylogenetic studies found that they were not closely related to the other species in Carduelis, they were moved to the resurrected genus Chloris. The genus had been first introduced by the French naturalist Georges Cuvier in 1800. The word Chloris is from the Ancient Greek khlōris for the European greenfinch; the specific epithet was chosen to honour Maurice Antoine François Monguillot, the General Secretary of French Indochina.