All species › Passerines › New World blackbirds, troupials and allies › Bronze-brown Cowbird
Bronze-brown Cowbird | Molothrus armenti
Colombiaanse koevogel | Tordo chico | Chupim-pardo-bronzeado
The Bronze-brown Cowbird is a small cowbird found only in a narrow strip along the Caribbean coast of Colombia. It was long regarded as an isolated form of Bronzed Cowbird Molothrus aeneus. Little is known of its habits and host species.
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Voice
Poorly described; probably high, thin whistles and bubbling sounds, as in Bronzed Cowbird.
Recording: Bernabe Lopez-Lanus — CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
16–18 cm, with a fairly short, conical black bill. The male is dark bronzy brown with a greenish or bronze gloss, the female duller and browner. The eye is red to orange-red. Juveniles are dull brown with a dark eye.
Confusion species
Bronzed Cowbird Molothrus aeneus is larger and blacker, the male with an obvious ruff on the nape, and lives in north-western Colombia. Shiny Cowbird Molothrus bonariensis has a dark eye; the male is glossy purplish black, the female greyish brown. Giant Cowbird Molothrus oryzivorus is much larger, with a long tail.
Habitat
Dry scrub, open dry woodland, mangrove edges, pastures and fields with scattered shrubs in the coastal lowlands. It forages on the ground for seeds and insects, sometimes near cattle. Presumably a brood parasite like related cowbirds; its hosts are barely known.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
Only in northern Colombia, in the Caribbean lowlands of the departments of Atlántico, Magdalena and Bolívar, including the area around the mouth of the Magdalena and the Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta. Absent from the rest of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and the Galápagos.
How and when to look
In dry scrub and pastures along the coast between Barranquilla and Santa Marta, search flocks of Shiny Cowbirds for smaller, brown birds with a red eye.
Conservation status
Near Threatened. Its small range is being affected by the loss of dry forest and scrub to agriculture, cattle ranching and building.
Scientific name
Molothrus armenti | Cabanis, 1851
Cabanis described the species in 1851 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Molothrus was introduced in 1832 by Swainson. The genus name comes from Greek mōlos, 'struggle', and thrōskō, 'to impregnate', referring to the brood parasitism of cowbirds. The species name comes from Latin armentum, 'herd of oxen' (from arare, 'to plough'), a name fitting the cowbirds; it goes back to Lichtenstein's manuscript name Icterus armenti. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cartagena, Colombia.