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Masked Yellowthroat | Geothlypis aequinoctialis
Zuid-Amerikaanse maskerzanger | Mascarita equinoccial
The Masked Yellowthroat is a resident of wet grasslands and marshes in northern South America, found in the Caribbean only on Trinidad. The male wears a black mask on a yellow head, much like the North American Common Yellowthroat. Birds from Central America and from southern and western South America were formerly included in this species; according to the IOC, Black-lored Yellowthroat Geothlypis auricularis, Southern Yellowthroat G. velata and Chiriqui Yellowthroat G. chiriquensis are now separate species, leaving the species in the narrow sense monotypic.
Voice
The song is a melodious, rapid warble of about two seconds, or a descending series of some twenty clear notes; heard mainly in the morning. The call is a short, raspy prew or chrew.
Recording: Pedro Rinaldi — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
13–14 cm, with a fairly long tail and a sturdy, dark bill. The male has a black mask across forehead, lores and cheek, bordered above by a narrow slate-grey band merging into the grey crown. Upperparts olive-green, throat and underparts bright yellow, including the belly. The female lacks the mask: the head is olive-grey, with yellowish lores and a faint yellow eye-ring, and the underparts are duller yellow.
Confusion species
Common Yellowthroat Geothlypis trichas, a rare winter visitor from North America on Trinidad, has a white or greyish-white band above the black mask, a whitish belly and brownish flanks; females have a yellow throat contrasting with a paler belly. American Yellow Warbler Setophaga aestiva and Mangrove Warbler Setophaga petechia lack a mask, have a yellow face and yellow edges to wings and tail, and live higher in trees and mangroves.
Habitat
Freshwater marshes with tall grass, reeds and sedges, seasonally flooded savanna, damp grassland, rice field margins and wet pastures, also rank growth along ditches. It usually lives in pairs, low in dense cover, but sings from the tops of reed and grass stems. It eats insects and spiders. The nest is a cup low in dense vegetation; the clutch is three to five white, speckled eggs.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
In the region only on Trinidad, where it occurs locally in lowland marshes and wet grassland, including around Caroni Swamp and Nariva Swamp; absent from Tobago. Outside the region in Colombia, Venezuela, the Guianas and northern Brazil, up to about 900 m.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Best in the early morning along the edges of freshwater marshes and rice fields on Trinidad, when males sing from tall stems. With any yellowthroat on Trinidad the grey band above the mask and the entirely yellow belly are the features to check to rule out Common Yellowthroat.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The species has a large range and adapts to human-altered wetlands such as plantations and sewage marshes. Habitat is lost locally through the draining of marshes and the conversion of wet grassland.
Scientific name
Geothlypis aequinoctialis | (Gmelin, 1789)
Gmelin described the species in 1789 as Motacilla aequinoctialis; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Geothlypis was introduced in 1847 by Cabanis. Geothlypis is Greek, from gē 'ground' and thlupis, an unidentified small bird: 'ground warbler', after its life low in dense cover. aequinoctialis is Latin for 'equatorial' (from aequinoctium 'equinox'), after its origin in the tropics near the equator. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cayenne, French Guiana.