This species, native to Asia, is a popular cage bird and frequent escapee, with wild populations in several warm-weather areas in North America. It is recognized as an established introduced wild species in Southern California, but numbers north of San Luis Obispo County are not robust enough to justify established wild status here. Nonetheless, there are many reports of this species, including records of nesting and juveniles, in the area around Almaden Lake in southern Santa Clara County where this bird was photographed; see http://web.stanford.edu/~kendric/birds/SBMunia/SBMunia.html . Birds of this species roost as well as nesting in their nest structures, so observation of a bird such as this one carrying nesting material is not in itself enough to establish breeding; see Robin Restall, Munias and Mannikins (Yale U. Press, 1997).