All species › Passerines › New World sparrows › Black-chested Sparrow
Position in the tree Birds Aves › Birds with a flexible palate Neognathae › All other modern birds Neoaves › Landbirds Telluraves › Falcons, parrots and passerines Australaves › Falcons and passerines Eufalconimorphae › Parrots and passerines Psittacopasserae
Black-chested Sparrow | Peucaea humeralis
Zwartborstgors | Zacatonero pecho negro
The Black-chested Sparrow is a sparrow with a black breast band and a boldly patterned head that lives in dry scrub in western and southern Mexico. Its range lies entirely within the guide area.
Voice
The song is a rapid, sputtering series of clear and shrill notes and trills. Pairs often sing in duet. The call is a sharp, metallic chik.
Recording: Manuel Grosselet — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
15–17 cm. Head grey with a dark brownish-grey crown, a short white supraloral stripe and a dark cheek. Throat white with a broad black malar stripe and a white moustachial stripe. A black band across the breast, sometimes broken in the centre. Belly white, flanks buffy brown. Back brown with black streaks; lesser wing coverts rufous. Tail long and dark brown. Bill fairly heavy, upper mandible black, lower mandible pale. The sexes are alike; juveniles lack the black breast band and are streaked on the breast.
Confusion species
Stripe-headed Sparrow Peucaea ruficauda is larger, with a black head with white central crown stripe and supercilium and a grey breast without a black band. Five-striped Sparrow Amphispizopsis quinquestriata has a dark grey breast with a black central spot, white stripes above and below the eye and an unstreaked grey back. White-throated Towhee Melozone albicollis is larger and plain greyish brown, with a white throat and rufous undertail coverts.
Habitat
Dry thornscrub, open dry deciduous forest and scrubby hillsides, often in dense scrub along dry washes, from sea level to about 1800 m. It lives in pairs or small groups and forages on the ground and in low bushes for insects and seeds.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Endemic to Mexico. On the Pacific slope and in the interior, from Jalisco through Colima, Michoacán and Guerrero, the Balsas basin in Morelos, Puebla and the State of Mexico, to Oaxaca.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Pairs often stay hidden in dense scrub; best found by listening for the sputtering duet on dry, scrubby hillsides, for example in the Balsas basin in Morelos and Guerrero.
Conservation status
Not threatened (LC). Locally fairly common, but dependent on dry scrub and dry forest, which are declining in western Mexico through farming and grazing.
Scientific name
Peucaea humeralis | (Cabanis, 1851)
Cabanis described the species in 1851 as Haemophila humeralis; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Peucaea was introduced in 1839 by Audubon. Peucaea is Greek, from peukē 'pine tree'; Audubon called the type species the 'Pinewood-Finch', after the pine woods it inhabits. humeralis is Late Latin for 'of the shoulders', from umerus 'shoulder', probably after the rufous scapulars. The specimen the first description was based on came from Tehotepec, Puebla, Mexico.