All species › Gamebirds › Guans, curassows and chachalacas › Rufous-bellied Chachalaca
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Rufous-bellied Chachalaca | Ortalis wagleri
Waglers chachalaca | Chachalaca vientre castaño
The Rufous-bellied Chachalaca is a large chachalaca of north-western Mexico, where it is endemic: from southern Sonora to northern Jalisco. Characteristic are the chestnut belly and the chestnut tail tips. The species was formerly regarded as a subspecies of the West Mexican Chachalaca, which lives to its south.
Voice
Flocks sing a loud, rhythmic chorus of four- to five-syllable phrases, something like kirr-i-i-kr, mainly at dawn and dusk. Also cackling, whistling and growling sounds.
Recording: Barry Edmonston — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
61–68 cm; a large, slender chachalaca with a long tail. The head and neck are grey, the upperparts olive-brown to grey-brown. The breast is grey, the belly and undertail coverts deep rufous to chestnut. The tail is dark with a green gloss and broad chestnut tips to the outer feathers. There is bare skin around the eye and on the throat, pink to reddish. Male and female are alike.
Confusion species
West Mexican Chachalaca Ortalis poliocephala has a whitish belly with an ochre wash and broad pale ochre instead of chestnut tail tips; the two species meet in Jalisco and form intermediate birds locally there. Crested Guan Penelope purpurascens is larger and darker, with white streaks on the neck and breast and a red dewlap.
Habitat
Tropical dry and semi-evergreen forest, thorn forest, riparian forest along rivers and arroyos and locally mangroves; also forest edges and scrub near villages and fields. From sea level to about 1300 m, occasionally up to 2000 m. It lives in groups that clamber through treetops and shrubs and eat fruit, leaves and flowers.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Endemic to north-western Mexico: southern Sonora, Sinaloa, the western foothills of the Sierra Madre Occidental in Chihuahua and Durango, Nayarit and northern Jalisco. Further south in Jalisco it is replaced by West Mexican Chachalaca.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In Nayarit around San Blas, along forest edges and in the mangroves, and in Sonora in the dry forest around Álamos. The loud dawn choruses usually give flocks away from afar.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The species is fairly common in its limited range and tolerates logged and fragmented forest well.
Scientific name
Ortalis wagleri | Gray, 1867
Gray described the species in 1867 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Ortalis was introduced in 1786 by Merrem. Ortalis is Greek for 'chick, young hen'. 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 Mexico (originally 'California and Mexico').