Black-faced Grosbeak
Encyclopedia
The Black-faced Grosbeak, Caryothraustes poliogaster, is a large seed
-eating bird
in the cardinal family
, which is a resident breeding species from southeastern Mexico
to eastern Panama
.
The adult Black-faced Grosbeak is 16.5 cm long, weighs 36 g, and has a heavy, mainly black, bill. It has a black face, yellow head, neck and breast, and olive back, wings and tail. The rump and belly are grey. Immatures are duller and have duskier face markings.
The vocalisations include sharp chip or tweet calls, buzzes and whistles, and the song is a musical whistled cher chi weet, cher chir weet, cher chi chuweet.
The Black-faced Grosbeak forages in shrubs or trees for beetle
s, caterpillar
s and other insect
s, and also eats fruit such as those of Gumbo-limbo (Bursera simaruba), seed
s, and nectar taken from flowers or epiphyte bracts. It forms noisy flocks of up to 20 birds, and is often in mixed-species feeding flock
s with honeycreeper
s and other tanager
s as well as New World warbler
s. It appears to generally try to avoid human-altered habitat though it can be sometimes found in heavily degraded former subtropical or tropical forest.
This species breeds in the Caribbean
lowlands and foothills from sea level to about 1000m altitude, and is found in the canopy and middle levels of dense wet forests, tall second growth, and semi-open habitats such as woodland edge and clearings. The nest is a bowl constructed from bromeliad leaves and other epiphyte
s 3–6 m high in a small tree or palm
. The female lays three brown-spotted grey-white eggs between April and June.
Seed
A seed is a small embryonic plant enclosed in a covering called the seed coat, usually with some stored food. It is the product of the ripened ovule of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants which occurs after fertilization and some growth within the mother plant...
-eating bird
Bird
Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...
in the cardinal family
Cardinal (bird)
The Cardinals or Cardinalidae are a family of passerine birds found in North and South America. The South American cardinals in the genus Paroaria are placed in another family, the Thraupidae ....
, which is a resident breeding species from southeastern Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
to eastern Panama
Panama
Panama , officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of Central America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The...
.
The adult Black-faced Grosbeak is 16.5 cm long, weighs 36 g, and has a heavy, mainly black, bill. It has a black face, yellow head, neck and breast, and olive back, wings and tail. The rump and belly are grey. Immatures are duller and have duskier face markings.
The vocalisations include sharp chip or tweet calls, buzzes and whistles, and the song is a musical whistled cher chi weet, cher chir weet, cher chi chuweet.
The Black-faced Grosbeak forages in shrubs or trees for beetle
Beetle
Coleoptera is an order of insects commonly called beetles. The word "coleoptera" is from the Greek , koleos, "sheath"; and , pteron, "wing", thus "sheathed wing". Coleoptera contains more species than any other order, constituting almost 25% of all known life-forms...
s, caterpillar
Caterpillar
Caterpillars are the larval form of members of the order Lepidoptera . They are mostly herbivorous in food habit, although some species are insectivorous. Caterpillars are voracious feeders and many of them are considered to be pests in agriculture...
s and other insect
Insect
Insects are a class of living creatures within the arthropods that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body , three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae...
s, and also eats fruit such as those of Gumbo-limbo (Bursera simaruba), seed
Seed
A seed is a small embryonic plant enclosed in a covering called the seed coat, usually with some stored food. It is the product of the ripened ovule of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants which occurs after fertilization and some growth within the mother plant...
s, and nectar taken from flowers or epiphyte bracts. It forms noisy flocks of up to 20 birds, and is often in mixed-species feeding flock
Mixed-species feeding flock
A mixed-species feeding flock, also termed a mixed-species foraging flock, mixed hunting party or informally bird wave, is a flock of usually insectivorous birds of different species, that join each other and move together while foraging...
s with honeycreeper
Honeycreeper
The typical honeycreepers are small birds in the tanager family. They are found in the tropical New World from Mexico south to Brazil.They occur in the forest canopy, and, as the name implies, they are specialist nectar feeders with long curved bills....
s and other tanager
Tanager
The tanagers comprise the bird family Thraupidae, in the order Passeriformes. The family has an American distribution.There were traditionally about 240 species of tanagers, but the taxonomic treatment of this family's members is currently in a state of flux...
s as well as New World warbler
New World warbler
The New World warblers or wood-warblers are a group of small, often colorful, passerine birds restricted to the New World. They are not related to the Old World warblers or the Australian warblers....
s. It appears to generally try to avoid human-altered habitat though it can be sometimes found in heavily degraded former subtropical or tropical forest.
This species breeds in the Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
lowlands and foothills from sea level to about 1000m altitude, and is found in the canopy and middle levels of dense wet forests, tall second growth, and semi-open habitats such as woodland edge and clearings. The nest is a bowl constructed from bromeliad leaves and other epiphyte
Epiphyte
An epiphyte is a plant that grows upon another plant non-parasitically or sometimes upon some other object , derives its moisture and nutrients from the air and rain and sometimes from debris accumulating around it, and is found in the temperate zone and in the...
s 3–6 m high in a small tree or palm
Arecaceae
Arecaceae or Palmae , are a family of flowering plants, the only family in the monocot order Arecales. There are roughly 202 currently known genera with around 2600 species, most of which are restricted to tropical, subtropical, and warm temperate climates...
. The female lays three brown-spotted grey-white eggs between April and June.