Red fody centre of the territory before courtship commences, with nests being stered together in loose colonies. The nest is globular with a side entrance and porch or short tube. It is constructed, mostly by the male, out of rootlets, tendrils, grasses and other long strands of vegetation, woven together. The nest takes around eight days to build, and many get abandoned if the male fails to attract a mate. Red fody The red fody ("Foudia madagascariensis"), sometimes known as the Madagascar fody, red cardinal fody or common fody, is a small bird native to Madagascar and introduced to various other islands
Red fody "Cardinalis Madagascariensis". Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his "Systema Naturae" for the twelfth edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson. One of these was the red fody. Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name "Loxia madagascariensis" and cited Brisson's work. This species is now placed in the genus "Foudia" that was introduced by the German naturalist Ludwig Reichenbach in 1850. The type species was subsequently