The list of birds threatened with extinction has grown fractionally; a new sign that governments are failing to meet a 2010 global conservation goal, an annual review of birds showed.

A 2009 Red List added birds including the newly discovered gorgeted puffleg - a bright-coloured Colombian hummingbird - the Sidamo lark in Ethiopia and a Galapagos finch to the worst category of "critically endangered".

"Despite government commitments to slow biodiversity loss, things are getting a little worse every year," said Jean-Christophe Vie, deputy head of the species programme of the International Union for Conservation of Nature which runs the list.

Dr Vie told Reuters that a few species were taken off threatened lists after successful conservation. Overall, the number of threatened birds grew by one since 2008 to 1,227 - 12 per cent of all species.

And 192 species were rated "critically endangered", up two overall from 2008. Nine were added to the category and seven taken out, most of them eased to "endangered".

Governments agreed in 2002 to make a "significant reduction" in the rate of biodiversity losses of animals and plants by 2010 - from threats such as destruction of habitats from expanding farms or cities and the impact of climate change.

Dr Vie said a hidden problem was that many common birds were getting less frequent in the skies but were not yet rated endangered. "There are groups you don't see any more in large numbers - such as swifts, larks, swallows," he said.

"In global terms, things continue to get worse - but there are some real conservation success stories this year," Leon Bennun, director of science and policy at BirdLife, which did the research for the Red List, said in a statement.

The Chatham Petrel in New Zealand and the Mauritius fody were both shifted down a notch to "endangered" from "critically endangered" after conservation work.

Among the most threatened, the bright-coloured puffleg was found only in a small mountainous area of Colombia, where forests were being cleared to grow coca.

In Ethiopia, the Sidamo lark could become mainland Africa's first bird extinction, because of changes in land use. And the medium-tree finch in the Galapagos was added to the critically endangered list because of an introduced parasitic fly.

Yet Vie said birds were not faring as badly as some other groups of creatures.