Sooty Grassquit Asemospiza fuliginosa Tiaris fuliginosa

Sooty Grassquit Asemospiza fuliginosus
(aka Tiaris fuliginosus)

Brazilian name: cigarra-do-coqueiro

Male Sooty Grassquit, Teresópolis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, November 2008 - click for larger image

The Sooty Grassquit is found in several disjunct areas: Colombia, northern Venezuela and Trinidad, south-east Venezuela and neighbouring Guiana, eastern Brazil near the coast and central Mato Grosso.

It inhabits forest and woodland edges as well as clearings and grassy scrub and seems very fond of seeding bamboo.

It looks very similar to Blue-black Grassquit Volatinia jacarina but the male is less glossy black and more sooty black.
The female is dull olive brown above and brighter olive-brown below moving to whitish in the centre of the belly but is very difficult to identify if not accompanied by a male.

Photo 5, taken at Boa Nova, Bahia, at 6:10 am with flash does not really show the subtlety of the colouring and is a bit confusing. Both Nacho Areta and Rick Simpson have questioned the id but Jeremy Minns recorded the same bird and the song is definitely of Sooty Grassquit. Nacho felt that the bill shape, colour and jizz of the bird was more like Uniform Finch Haplospiza unicolor so it is obviously not a typical looking bird.

Male Sooty Grassquit, Ubatuba, São Paulo, Brazil, December 2006 - click for larger image

Note, however, that the Sooty Grassquit has a reddish gape and that the legs are black while the Uniform Finch has no hint of colour around the gape and has pinkish legs and feet.

There are recordings on xeno-canto, a distribution map from NatureServe and additional information available via Avibase. There is a page in Portuguese on Wikiaves.

Male Sooty Grassquit, Boa Nova, Bahia, Brazil, July 2002 - click for larger image

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