Prevost's Ground-Sparrow Melozone biarcuatum, also known as the White-faced Ground-Sparrow, is an American sparrow

American sparrow

American sparrows are a group of mainly New World passerine birds, forming part of the family Emberizidae. American sparrows are seed-eating birds with conical bills, brown or gray in color, and many species have distinctive head patterns....

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Etymology

Its English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 name commemorates French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 naturalist

Natural history

Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...

 Florent Prévost

Florent Prévost

Florent Prévost was a French naturalistPrévost was assistant naturalist at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle. He was the author of various zoological works, including Les Pigeons par Madame Knip and, with C. L...

. The isolated

Disjunct distribution

In biology, a taxon with a disjunct distribution is one that has two or more groups that are related but widely separated from each other geographically...

 Costa Rican form may be a separate species, Cabanis's Ground-Sparrow (M. cabanisi); its scientific name refers to German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 ornithologist Jean Cabanis

Jean Cabanis

Jean Louis Cabanis was a German ornithologist.Cabanis was born in Berlin. He studied at the University of Berlin from 1835 to 1839, and then travelled to North America, returning in 1841 with a large natural history collection. He was assistant and later director of the Berlin University Museum,...

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Distribution and habitat

This bird breeds at middle altitudes from southern 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 western Honduras

Honduras

Honduras is a republic in Central America. It was previously known as Spanish Honduras to differentiate it from British Honduras, which became the modern-day state of Belize...

 and in Costa Rica

Costa Rica

Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....

. It is found typically at altitudes between 600 and 1600m in the undergrowth and thickets of semi-open woodland, coffee

Coffee

Coffee is a brewed beverage with a dark,init brooo acidic flavor prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant, colloquially called coffee beans. The beans are found in coffee cherries, which grow on trees cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia,...

 plantations, hedgerows and large gardens.

Description

The Prevost's Ground-Sparrow is on average 15 cm long and weighs 28 g. The adult has a stubby dark-grey bill, unstreaked olive-brown upperparts, a rufous crown and mainly white underparts. Young birds are browner above, have yellower underparts, and a duller indistinct head pattern.

The northern form has a simple head pattern in which the rufous of the crown extends down the sides of the neck as a half collar behind the white face.

In the Costa Rican subspecies, the rufous of the crown extends to behind the eye and is bordered on its anterior edge with black This black border is broken by a white eye ring. The forehead is white, bordered below with a thin black line, there is a black malar stripe, and a black central breast patch.

Breeding

The nest, built by the female, is a neat lined cup constructed less than 2 m up in a bush or large tussock. The female lays two or three ruddy-blotched white eggs, which she incubates for 12–14 days. The male helps in feeding the chicks. This species is sometimes parasitised

Brood parasite

Brood parasites are organisms that use the strategy of brood parasitism, a kind of kleptoparasitism found among birds, fish or insects, involving the manipulation and use of host individuals either of the same or different species to raise the young of the brood-parasite...

 by the Bronzed Cowbird

Bronzed Cowbird

The Bronzed Cowbird , Molothrus aeneus, is a small icterid.It breeds from the southern U.S. states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Louisiana south through Central America to Panama. An isolated population on the Caribbean coast of Colombia is sometimes treated as a separate species,...

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Voice

Calls include a thin tsit or a clearer psee. The male’s song, given from a hidden perch in the wet season, is a whistled pst’t’t’t peer peer peer whee whee whee.

External links

• Photo-High Res; Article
• Prevost's Ground-Sparrow photo gallery VIREO
• Photos; Article birdguatemala