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Black-capped Donacobius | Donacobius atricapilla
Zwartkopdonacobius | Donacobio
The Black-capped Donacobius is a noisy, long-tailed songbird of marshes and vegetated shores, the only species in its own family. In the guide area it lives only in eastern Panama; further south it is widespread in South America. Pairs sing together in duet and are easy to follow in the marsh.
Voice
Pairs sing loud duets of clear, repeated whistles such as kwoit-kwoit-kwoit, mixed with harsh, grating notes, while wagging the spread tail. It also gives rasping alarm calls.
Recording: Fabrício Grigolin — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
21–23 cm, including the long, graduated tail. Head and crown black, merging into dark chocolate-brown upperparts. Underparts warm buffy yellow with fine dark bars on the flanks. Eye bright yellow-orange. Wings blackish brown with a white patch at the base of the primaries, conspicuous in flight. Tail blackish with broad white tips. On the side of the neck a bare orange-yellow skin patch that becomes visible when singing. Sexes alike.
Confusion species
Little confusion is possible in its habitat. Tropical Mockingbird Mimus gilvus also has a long tail with white tips, but is grey with white underparts and lives in drier, open country.
Habitat
Freshwater marshes with tall grass and reeds, water hyacinth and other floating and shoreline vegetation along lakes, oxbows and slow rivers, also wet pastures with shrubs. It eats insects and other small invertebrates that it finds low in the vegetation over water. It builds an open cup nest in dense marsh vegetation over water.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
In the guide area only in eastern Panama, mainly in eastern Panamá province and in Darién. Outside the guide area widespread in South America east of the Andes, south to northern Argentina.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
The conspicuous duet with wagging tails gives pairs away in marshes with tall grass; they usually perch on top of a stem or small shrub above the water.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Widespread and common in South America; in the guide area restricted to eastern Panama, where its distribution is local.
Scientific name
Donacobius atricapilla | (Linnaeus, 1766)
Linnaeus described the species in 1766 as [Turdus] atricapilla; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Donacobius was introduced in 1831 by Swainson. Donacobius is Greek, from donax 'reed' and bios 'life, mode of life': 'reed-dweller', after the marshy reedbeds where it lives. atricapilla is Latin, from ater 'black' and capillus 'hair of the head': 'black-capped', after the black crown. The specimen the first description was based on came from eastern Brazil (replacing the erroneous 'Cape of Good Hope').