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Sooty Grassquit | Asemospiza fuliginosa
Zwartborstgrondvink | Semillero fuliginoso
The Sooty Grassquit is a South American grassquit that in the Caribbean occurs only in Trinidad. Unlike most grassquits it is a bird of forest edges and clearings rather than open grassland. It wanders to places where bamboo is seeding or where new growth springs up after fire, which makes it unpredictable.
Voice
The song is a simple, fast series of high notes, also described as a thin, wiry, slurred phrase with a buzzy quality. The call is a short chee.
Recording: JAYRSON ARAUJO DE OLIVEIRA — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
10–11.5 cm, with a short, conical dark bill. The male is entirely sooty black, with an olive tinge to the back and slightly paler underparts. The female is warm olive-brown, darker above, with brownish wings and a paler, olive breast and belly; her bill is slightly paler. Juveniles resemble the female.
Confusion species
The male Blue-black Grassquit Volatinia jacarina is glossy blue-black, with a more pointed bill, and in display leaps up singing from a perch in open grassland; its females are browner and streaked on the breast. Grey Seedeater Sporophila intermedia is grey, with a thick, rounded, pale bill. On Tobago and the islets off Trinidad the male Black-faced Grassquit Melanospiza bicolor has only a black head and breast, with an olive-green back.
Habitat
Edges of moist forest, grassy clearings in and near forest, secondary growth and ground regrowing after fire, in Trinidad from sea level to about 600 m. It eats seeds and specialises in seeding bamboo; breeding is probably timed to the supply of bamboo seed. Outside the breeding season sometimes in flocks.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
In Trinidad a scarce and local resident, mainly in the Northern Range, for example along the Blanchisseuse Road and at Morne Bleu and Brasso Seco, and locally in the centre and south of the island. Not recorded on Tobago. In the wet season birds move to higher ground; most records fall between November and April. Outside the region scattered and patchy across northern and eastern South America, from Colombia and Venezuela to Guyana, Brazil, Paraguay and northern Argentina.
- Resident
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Forest edges and clearings along the Blanchisseuse Road and the access road to Morne Bleu in the Northern Range are the best-known places. Seeding bamboo and grass clumps along forest trails are worth checking; females closely resemble other grassquits and seedeaters.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The species has a large but highly fragmented range and is scarce and irregular in many areas.
Scientific name
Asemospiza fuliginosa | (Wied-Neuwied, 1830)
Wied-Neuwied described the species in 1830 as Fringilla fuliginosa; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Asemospiza was introduced in 2016 by Burns, Unitt & Mason. Asemospiza is Greek, from asēmos 'without marks' and spiza 'finch', after the plain, unmarked plumage. fuliginosa is Latin for 'sooty', after the male's dark, sooty plumage. The specimen the first description was based on came from Camamu, Bahia, Brazil.