All species › Passerines › Tanagers and allies › Thick-billed Seed Finch
Thick-billed Seed Finch | Sporophila funerea
Diksnavelzaadkraker | Semillero piquigrueso | Curió-de-bico-grosso
Thick-billed Seed Finch is a small seed finch with a very thick bill that lives west and north of the Andes in the guide area. It was long treated as one species with Chestnut-bellied Seed Finch; intermediate birds occur in the Magdalena Valley. The male is entirely black, the female warm brown.
Voice
The song is long and varied: a fast series of clear whistles, trills and twittering notes, often from an exposed perch. The call is a short, metallic chek.
Recording: Stephan Risch — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
11–12 cm, with a heavy black bill with an almost straight culmen. The male is dull black, with a small white wing speculum and white underwing coverts, visible mainly in flight. The female is dark warm brown above and rufous-brown below, also with a dark bill. Young males at first resemble the female.
Confusion species
Male Chestnut-bellied Seed Finch Sporophila angolensis has a chestnut belly and lives mainly east of the Andes. Large-billed Seed Finch Sporophila crassirostris is larger, and the male has a pale, ivory-coloured bill. Male Blue-black Grassquit Volatinia jacarina is glossy blue-black, with a slimmer, pointed bill. Males of Variable Seedeater Sporophila corvina are smaller, with a shorter bill and usually some white on the rump or belly.
Habitat
Rank growth, overgrown pasture, grassy clearings, roadsides and forest edges in humid lowlands and foothills, from sea level to about 1500 m. It eats mainly seeds of grasses and sedges. The nest is a loose cup low in scrub or tall grass.
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 Pacific lowlands, the Caribbean lowlands and the Magdalena and Cauca valleys. In Ecuador in the western lowlands and foothills, south to about El Oro. Hardly known from Peru; absent from Bolivia and the Galápagos. Outside the guide area from south-eastern Mexico to Panama.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Search roadsides with rank growth and overgrown pastures in western Ecuador and the Colombian lowlands for singing males on a branch or wire. Blue-black Grassquits, which keep jumping up from their perches, often share the same terrain.
Conservation status
Least Concern. The species benefits from open, man-made habitats, but is locally trapped for the cage-bird trade.
Scientific name
Sporophila funerea | (Sclater, 1860)
Sclater described the species in 1860 as Oryzoborus funereus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Sporophila was introduced in 1844 by Cabanis. The genus name combines Greek sporos, 'seed', and philos, 'fond of'. The species name comes from Latin funereus, 'funereal', for the black plumage. The specimen the first description was based on came from Suchapam, Oaxaca, Mexico.