All species › Passerines › New World sparrows › Yellow-headed Brushfinch
Yellow-headed Brushfinch | Atlapetes flaviceps
Goudkopstruikgors | Atlapetes cabecigualdo | Tico-tico-de-cabeça-amarela
The Yellow-headed Brushfinch is a Colombian brushfinch with a yellow head, found only in the Central Andes. For a long time it was known only from a few old specimens, until it was rediscovered in the 1990s. It lives in pairs or small groups in scrub and at forest edges, often in secondary growth.
Voice
High, thin calls, roughly tseet, and a short song of high, thin notes, often in duet.
Recording: Ross Gallardy — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
17–18 cm, with a stout, dark bill. The head is yellow, with an olive wash on the crown and cheeks and often a dark patch around the eye and lores. The throat and underparts are bright yellow, and the flanks olive. The upperparts are olive-green, the wings and tail darker. The sexes are alike; juveniles are more olive-brown on the head and less clearly marked.
Confusion species
Dusky-headed Brushfinch Atlapetes fuscoolivaceus has a dark, sooty olive-grey head and lives in the upper Magdalena valley. Yellow-breasted Brushfinch Atlapetes latinuchus has a rufous crown and a black face. White-naped Brushfinch Atlapetes albinucha has a black head with a white crown stripe and only a yellow throat.
Habitat
Scrub, forest edges, secondary forest, overgrown slopes and the edges of coffee and other plantations, roughly between 1300 and 2500 m. It searches low in the vegetation and on the ground for insects, seeds and fruit, sometimes in mixed flocks. The nest is a cup low in a shrub.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
In Colombia only in the Central Andes, mainly on the eastern slope in Tolima and Huila, locally also on the western slope in Quindío and Risaralda. Absent from Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and the Galápagos. Does not occur outside the guide area.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Search shrubby forest edges and secondary growth on the eastern slope of the Central Andes, for example in the valleys above Ibagué in Tolima. Pairs move low through the scrub and call with their high notes.
Conservation status
Near Threatened. The range is small and fragmented by forest clearance for farming and cattle ranching; the species does tolerate secondary growth.
Scientific name
Atlapetes flaviceps | Chapman, 1912
Chapman described the species in 1912 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Atlapetes was introduced in 1831 by Wagler. The genus name comes from Greek: the mythical titan Atlas and petēs, 'flyer'. The species name comes from Latin flavus, 'yellow', and -ceps, 'head', for the yellow head. The specimen the first description was based on came from Río Toche, Tolima, Colombia.