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Raimondi's Yellow Finch | Sicalis raimondii
Grijsflanksaffraangors | Chirigüe de Raimondi | Canário-de-raimondi
Raimondi's Yellow Finch is a small yellow finch found only in Peru, on the dry western slope of the Andes. It wanders in flocks and after wet years suddenly appears in large numbers in the lomas and on vegetated slopes, then largely disappears again. The English and Spanish names honour the Italian-Peruvian naturalist Antonio Raimondi.
Voice
The song is a series of fast, buzzy and twittering notes, often given in flight or from a rock or shrub. Flocks keep up a constant twittering of short tchip calls.
Recording: Cristian Pinto — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
11–12 cm, with a short, conical bill and a fairly short tail. The male has a yellow head with grey ear coverts, greyish-brown upperparts with dark streaks and yellow underparts with grey flanks. The female is duller: greyish brown and streaked above, dull white to pale yellow below with a grey wash. Young birds resemble the female but are paler and finely streaked below.
Confusion species
Grassland Yellow Finch Sicalis luteola is uniformly yellow below without grey flanks and lives in wet grassland and marsh edges. Bright-rumped Yellow Finch Sicalis uropygialis has a plain grey back, a yellow rump and a white eye-ring, and lives much higher, on the puna. Greenish Yellow Finch Sicalis olivascens is larger and more olive-green, and also lives higher. Saffron Finch Sicalis flaveola is larger, with an orange forehead and an unstreaked greenish-yellow back.
Habitat
Lomas, rocky, sparsely vegetated slopes with shrubs and cacti and dry scrub along the western slope, from near sea level to about 2500 m, locally higher. It feeds in flocks on the ground on seeds of grasses and herbs. It breeds mainly after wet periods; the nest is poorly described.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
Only in Peru, along the western slope of the Andes and in the lomas, from the north to the south of the country. Numbers fluctuate strongly from year to year. Absent from Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and the Galápagos.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
After a moist winter season, visit the coastal lomas, such as Lomas de Lachay north of Lima, and look for small flocks of yellow finches on the ground among the herbs. In dry years they can be completely absent there.
Conservation status
Least Concern. Its occurrence is irregular and strongly dependent on rainfall. No specific threats are known, although lomas are lost locally to construction and grazing.
Scientific name
Sicalis raimondii | Taczanowski, 1874
Taczanowski described the species in 1874 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Sicalis was introduced in 1828 by Boie. The genus name comes from Greek sikalis, a small black-headed bird, perhaps a warbler of the genus Sylvia. The species name honours Antonio Raimondi (1826–1890), an Italian naturalist and geographer who spent most of his life working in Peru. The specimen the first description was based on came from Lima, Peru.