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White-eared Ground Sparrow | Melozone leucotis
Witoorgrondgors | Toquí orejiblanco
The White-eared Ground Sparrow is a ground sparrow with a black head full of white spots and a black breast that lives shyly on the ground in the undergrowth of montane forest edges and coffee plantations. It occurs only in the guide area, from Chiapas to Costa Rica.
Voice
The song is a short series of very high, thin notes, often as a fast, stuttering series. The call is a high, thin tseet, barely audible above background noise.
Recording: Oscar Campbell — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
16–18 cm. Head black with a white spot in front of the eye, a narrow white crescent below the eye and a white spot or stripe behind the eye across the ear-coverts. A yellowish-green to olive patch on the side of the neck. Upperparts olive-brown. Throat and breast black, belly white, flanks olive-grey. Bill black, legs pinkish brown. The sexes are alike; the exact head pattern varies slightly from region to region. Juveniles are browner with a fainter head pattern.
Confusion species
Prevost's Ground Sparrow Melozone biarcuata (Chiapas to Honduras) and Cabanis's Ground Sparrow Melozone cabanisi (Central Valley of Costa Rica) have a rufous crown, a largely white face and a white throat. Chestnut-capped Brushfinch Arremon brunneinucha has a chestnut crown, a white throat and a narrow black breast band and lives in denser, more humid forest.
Habitat
Dense undergrowth at forest edges and in open montane forest, scrubby secondary growth, hedgerows, coffee plantations, overgrown field edges and gardens with dense shrubs, mainly between about 500 and 2000 m. It forages on the ground, scratching among the leaf litter 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 the guide area. In the highlands of Chiapas, Guatemala and El Salvador, locally in Honduras, in the central highlands of Nicaragua and on both slopes of the central highlands of Costa Rica.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Best found in coffee plantations and scrubby forest edges in the highlands of Costa Rica, for example around Monteverde; it often comes out onto trails and grassy verges at dawn and dusk.
Conservation status
Not threatened (LC). Fairly common in Costa Rica, scarcer and more local in the north of its range; it partly benefits from shrubby coffee plantations.
Scientific name
Melozone leucotis | Cabanis, 1861
Cabanis described the species in 1861 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Melozone was introduced in 1850 by Reichenbach. Melozone is Greek, from mēlon 'cheek' and zōnē 'girdle, band', after the patterned cheeks of the type species. leucotis is Greek, from leukos 'white' and ous, ōtos 'ear', after the white patches on the ear region. The specimen the first description was based on came from Costa Rica.