Sooty Grassquit Tiaris fuliginosus

Brazilian name: cigarra-do-coqueiro
Male Sooty Grassquit, Boa Nova, Bahia, Brazil, July 2002 - 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.
Male Sooty Grassquit, Ubatuba, São Paulo, Brazil, December 2006 - click for larger image It looks very similar to Blue-black Grassquit   Volatinia jacarina but the male is less glossy black and more sooty black. Photo 1, 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 it is 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. Photo 2 was taken at Fazenda Angelim, Ubatuba.

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.

There is an illustration in Ridgely & Tudor, Volume 1, Plate 26.

There are recordings and a distribution map on xeno-canto .
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