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Golden-winged Sparrow | Arremon schlegeli
Goudvleugelgors | Cerquero alidorado | Tico-tico-de-asa-dourada
The Golden-winged Sparrow is a sparrow of dry and semi-humid forests in northern Colombia and Venezuela. It combines an entirely black head with a golden-yellow bill and a yellow shoulder patch. It lives in pairs or family groups in the undergrowth.
Voice
The song is a series of high, thin, whistled notes. The call is a high tsit.
Recording: Scott Olmstead — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
16 cm. The bill is golden-yellow to orange-yellow. The head is entirely black, without stripes. The back is grey to olive-grey, with a yellow patch on the shoulder; the wings and tail are grey. The underparts are white, with a black patch on the side of the breast and grey flanks. The sexes are alike. Juveniles are duller, with a darker bill.
Confusion species
Orange-billed Sparrow Arremon aurantiirostris has a white supercilium, a complete black breast band and an olive-green back, and lives in humid forest. Black-striped Sparrow Arremonops conirostris has a grey head with black stripes and a dark bill. Tocuyo Sparrow Arremonops tocuyensis is smaller and paler, with brown head stripes, and lives in dry scrub in La Guajira.
Habitat
Undergrowth of dry deciduous forest, semi-humid forest, gallery forest and scrub, from sea level to about 1300 m. It forages on the ground and in low vegetation for insects and seeds. Little is known about the nest.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
In Colombia in the Caribbean lowlands and foothills of the north, from Atlántico and Bolívar east through Magdalena and the lower slopes of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta to Cesar and La Guajira. Absent from Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and the Galápagos. Outside the guide area in northern Venezuela.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Search the forest on the lower slopes of the Santa Marta, for example around Minca and in Tayrona. Pairs forage low in dense undergrowth; listen for their high calls.
Conservation status
Least Concern. Dry forest in northern Colombia is heavily fragmented, but the species also lives in secondary forest and scrub.
Scientific name
Arremon schlegeli | Bonaparte, 1850
Bonaparte described the species in 1850 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Arremon was introduced in 1816 by Vieillot. The genus name comes from Greek arrhēmōn, 'silent, without speech'. The species name honours Hermann Schlegel (1804–1884), German ornithologist and director of the natural history museum in Leiden. The specimen the first description was based on came from Caracas, Venezuela.