All species › Passerines › New World blackbirds, troupials and allies › Chestnut-headed Oropendola
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Chestnut-headed Oropendola | Psarocolius wagleri
Waglers oropendola | Oropéndola cabeza castaña
The Chestnut-headed Oropendola is the smallest oropendola in the guide area: black with a chestnut head, a pale bill and a yellow tail. It lives in humid lowland and foothill forest from south-eastern Mexico to Panama and nests in colonies of long, hanging nests.
Voice
A liquid, hollow plok followed by creaking and bubbling notes, often with a bow by the male. Call a harsh chack and a nasal kak.
Recording: Juan Freile — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
28–35 cm. Male larger than female. Head, neck and upper breast chestnut; rest of the body black, with chestnut rump and undertail coverts. Tail yellow with black central feathers. Bill pale greenish yellow to ivory, with a broad base extending onto the forehead as a shield. Eye pale blue. Male with a short, thin crest. Female similar in colour and smaller.
Confusion species
Montezuma Oropendola Psarocolius montezuma is much larger, with a chestnut body, a black head, bare blue and pink facial skin and a black bill with an orange tip. Crested Oropendola Psarocolius decumanus, found only in Panama, has a black head. Scarlet-rumped Cacique Cacicus uropygialis is smaller, all black with a red rump, and has a black tail. Yellow-billed Cacique Amblycercus holosericeus is all black, with a yellow eye, and lives low in dense undergrowth.
Habitat
Humid lowland rainforest, foothill forest, forest edge and clearings in the forest, shade coffee and cacao plantations and pastures with tall trees, from sea level to about 1,500 m. It forages in small groups in the canopy, often with other species. It eats fruit, nectar and insects. Colonies are in tall, isolated trees.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
From southern Veracruz and northern Oaxaca through Tabasco and Chiapas and Central America to Panama, and further in western Colombia and north-western Ecuador. In northern Central America mainly on the Caribbean slope; in Costa Rica and Panama on both slopes. Resident.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
At dusk small groups fly in a straight line over the forest to their roost; the chestnut head and yellow tail are then easy to see.
Conservation status
Not threatened (LC). Common in much of its range. Forest loss is a threat, but the species also uses forest edges and plantations with tall trees.
Scientific name
Psarocolius wagleri | (Gray, 1844)
Gray described the species in 1844 as C[acicus] Wagleri; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Psarocolius was introduced in 1827 by Wagler. Psarocolius is Greek, from psar 'starling' and koloios 'jackdaw', for these large, starling-like birds. wagleri honours the German zoologist Johann Georg Wagler (1800–1832), a specialist in reptiles and birds. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cobán, Guatemala.