Crimson-collared Grosbeak (Periporphyrus celaeno) — Vorstman's Guide to the Birds of North America

Voice

The song is a slow, clear series of warbled whistled notes, the last usually slurred upward. There is also a penetrating whistle that begins with an s-like attack and slides up or down. The call is a sharp, metallic chink. Vagrants in Texas are mostly silent and give at most the call note.

No recording with a suitable Creative Commons licence has been found for this species yet; what to listen for is described below.

Identification

The male is black on head, throat and wings, with a dull red to pinkish-red band across the nape that continues over the shoulders and underparts; on the belly the red is mottled with black. The female has the same black head and breast but is olive-green above and yellow-green below. Young birds resemble the female with less black. The bill in both sexes is heavy, deep at the base and dark; the tail is long for a cardinal of this size. The bird moves slowly and often sits still for long periods in the shrub layer.

Confusion species

Within the guide area there is little to confuse it with. Crimson-collared Tanager (Ramphocelus sanguinolentus) has a far slimmer bill with a silver base to the lower mandible and a sharply bounded red collar with no red on the belly. Female Blue Bunting is plain brown, without a black head and without green. The female of this species is told at once by the combination of black head, green back and yellow underparts.

Habitat

Humid and semi-arid deciduous forest, forest edge and older second growth in the foothills of the Sierra Madre Oriental, from the lowlands to about 1800 metres. It forages at all heights, including low in the shrub layer and on the ground. In South Texas the vagrants keep to the remaining patches of Tamaulipan thorn forest and to the planted parks and sanctuaries along the Rio Grande.

Where the bird is most often found, arranged by the USNVC — the vegetation classification of the United States and Canada — and CMECS for sea and coast.

Range and movements

The entire range lies in northeastern Mexico: central Nuevo León, Tamaulipas, eastern San Luis Potosí, northeastern Puebla and northern Veracruz. The species is resident but drops to lower forest in winter. In the winters with the strongest northward movement a few birds are found in the lower Rio Grande valley of Texas, usually between November and March; some stay for weeks or months in one spot.

Resident
Breeding (summer)
Winter
Passage
dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

The map is a density field, not a drawn range boundary: it is built from the records themselves and therefore does not follow state or national borders. Both the seasonal colour and the depth of colour come, cell by cell, from the records of GBIF (2006–2026), counted per 0,7° cell and divided by all bird records in that same cell, so that the density of birdwatchers does not count. Every cell is counted separately for June–July, December–January and the migration months, and takes the colour of the season that wins there; a cell is only called summer or winter where the other season is nearly empty. Country outlines: Natural Earth (public domain). This species occupies a small area; the map is zoomed in on it.

Where and when to look

For the Texas vagrants, follow the reports from November to March and search the known Rio Grande parks, where the bird works under the shrubs for fallen fruit. It gives itself away more often by movement in the understorey than by sound. On the breeding range the mountain roads west of Ciudad Victoria are the usual place.

Conservation

The species is listed as Least Concern (LC); the population has not been counted precisely, but the range is small and confined to one mountain chain and the adjoining lowland. Deforestation and conversion of woodland to farmland in Tamaulipas and Nuevo León reduce the area available. For the United States the species is not a management question: it involves scattered vagrants.

Scientific name

Periporphyrus celaeno | (Deppe, 1830)

Deppe described the species in 1830 as Tanagra Celaeno, from a specimen taken at Papantla in Veracruz; because it later moved to another genus, author and year stand in parentheses. It long stood as the only species in the genus Rhodothraupis; genetic work placed it in Periporphyrus, from Greek peri 'around' and porphyreos 'purple-red'. The species name celaeno refers to Celaeno of Greek mythology, from kelainos 'dark, black'. The Dutch name names the red band across the male's nape.