It is native to sub-Saharan Africa but has been introduced to many other regions of the world and now has an estimated global extent of occurrence of 10,000,000 km2.

The common waxbill was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Loxia astrild.

[3] Linnaeus based his description on the "Wax Bill" that had been described and illustrated in 1751 by the English naturalist George Edwards in his A Natural History of Uncommon Birds.

The black-rumped waxbill is black rather than brown on the rump and has a pale vent (area underneath the tail).

The black-lored waxbill (found only in the Democratic Republic of Congo) has a black rather than red stripe through the eye.

In West Africa they are more local with the main population centred on Sierra Leone, Liberia and the Ivory Coast.

In Spain it has been introduced in the largest cities in the last ten years and is now quite commonly seen in Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia, as well as along the Spanish-Portuguese border.

The nest is a large ball of criss-crossed grass stems with a long downward-pointing entrance tube on one side.

The diet consists mainly of grass and millet[10][11] seeds but insects are also eaten on occasions, especially during the breeding season when more protein is needed.

They usually feed by clinging to the stems with their long, spindly claws and picking from the flower heads but they will also search for fallen seeds on the ground.