All species › Passerines › Tityras, becards and allies › Cinereous Becard
Cinereous Becard | Pachyramphus rufus
Grijze bekarde | Cabezón cinéreo | Caneleiro-cinzento
The Cinereous Becard is a small becard of semi-open country, forest edges and river islands in northern South America. The male is pale grey and white with a black crown, the female bright rufous. In the guide area the species is common mainly in Colombia; in Peru it is limited to the north-eastern lowlands.
Voice
The song is a soft, rising series of clear whistles, sometimes accelerating. Also short, thin calls.
Recording: JAYRSON ARAUJO DE OLIVEIRA — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
13.5–14 cm, with a large head and a short, thick bill. The male is pale grey above, with a glossy black crown, a white forehead edge and white lores, and greyish white below. The wings are blackish with broad grey and white edges to the coverts and flight feathers. The female is bright rufous above, with a chestnut crown and pale lores, and pale buff to whitish below, with a paler throat. Young birds resemble the female.
Confusion species
Black-and-white Becard Pachyramphus albogriseus lives higher in the mountains; the male has a white supercilium and distinct white wing bars, the female a chestnut crown bordered black. Black-capped Becard Pachyramphus marginatus lives inside Amazonian forest; the male has a dark grey back with black. The female resembles Chestnut-crowned Becard Pachyramphus castaneus, which has a grey band round the back of the crown, and Cinnamon Becard Pachyramphus cinnamomeus, which is uniformly cinnamon with a pale stripe above the lores.
Habitat
Semi-open country with trees, forest edges, gallery forest, open secondary forest, mangrove and swamp edges, river islands with young forest and wooded pastures, from sea level to about 1500 m in the Andean valleys of Colombia. It takes insects and fruit in the middle storey and canopy. The nest is large and globular, with a side entrance, high in a tree.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
In Colombia widespread in the northern lowlands, the Magdalena and Cauca valleys and the llanos; absent from the Pacific coast. In Peru in the north-eastern lowlands, mainly on river islands and along the large rivers in Loreto and Ucayali. In Ecuador at most a single record. Absent from Bolivia and the Galápagos. Outside the guide area from Panama to Venezuela, the Guianas and Amazonian Brazil.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In Colombia it is often found in wooded parks, pastures and forest edges in the Andean valleys and the north. In Peru search river islands with young trees along the Amazon and the Napo near Iquitos.
Conservation status
Least Concern. The species tolerates semi-open and disturbed landscapes.
Scientific name
Pachyramphus rufus | (Boddaert, 1783)
Boddaert described the species in 1783 as Muscicapa rufa; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Pachyramphus was introduced in 1840 by Gray. The genus name comes from Greek pakhus, 'stout, thick', and rhamphos, 'bill'. The species name is Latin rufus, 'red, rufous'; the name is based on a female, d'Aubenton's 'Gobe-mouche roux de Cayenne'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cayenne, French Guiana.