Cabezón Canelo/Cinnamon Becard/Pachyramphus cinnamomeus

Nombre en español: Cabezón Canelo

Nombre en ingles: Cinnamon Becard

Nombre científico: Pachyramphus cinnamomeus

Familia: Tityridae

Canto: Peter Boesman

El anambé canelo o cabezón canelo (Pachyramphus cinnamomeus), también denominado mosquero-cabezón canelo (en México), es una especie de ave paseriforme de la familia Tityridae, perteneciente al numeroso género Pachyramphus. Es nativo de la América tropical (Neotrópico), desde México, por América Central, hasta el noroeste de América del Sur.

Distribución y hábitat

Se distribuye desde el sureste de México, por Guatemala, Belice, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panamá, norte y oeste de Colombia, hacia el sur hasta el oeste de Ecuador y hacia el este hasta el noroeste de Venezuela. Recientemente fue encontrado tan alejado como en la Cordillera Oriental de Colombia.

Esta especie es considerada común en sus hábitats naturales, los bordes de selvas húmedas, bosques secundarios y plantaciones diversas, hasta los 1500 m de altitud.

Cinnamon becard

The cinnamon becard (Pachyramphus cinnamomeus) is a passerine bird found in Latin America.

Taxonomy

It has been placed with the tityras in the cotinga or the tyrant flycatcher families by various authors, but the evidence strongly suggest the tityras and their closest relatives are better separated as Tityridae. The AOU for example advocates this separation.

Description

The adult cinnamon becard is 5.5 in (14 cm) long and weighs 0.6–0.8 oz (17–22 g). It is rufous above and paler cinnamon below, with a grey bill and legs. Unlike other becards, the sexes are similar, but the young are brighter above and paler overall. Northern birds have a pale supercilium and dusky line from the bill to the eye, but the subspecies Pachyramphus cinnamomeus magdalenae west of the Andes shows more contrast, with a stronger supercilium and blackish loral line.

The calls include high thin whistles. The males’ song is a plaintive ascending dee dee dee dee dee dee de while the females’ is a weaker deeeu dew dew, dew dew.

Distribution and habitat

The cinnamon becard is a resident breeding species from south-eastern Mexico south to north-western Ecuador and north-western Venezuela. It was recently found to be far more common on the Amazonian slope of the Colombian Cordillera Oriental than previously believed.

It occurs over a wide range of altitudes, from almost sea level to (albeit rarely) more than 5,000 ft (1,700 m) ASL; they prefer disturbed habitat like open woodland including forest edges and clearings, mangroves, and secondary forest e.g. dominated by Naked Albizia (Albizia carbonaria, Fabaceae).

Behaviour

Breeding

The nest, built by the female at the tip of a high tree branch 8–50 ft (2.5–15 m) up, is a spherical structure of plant material with a low entrance, which for protection is often built near a wasp nest. The typical clutch is 3–4 olive brown-blotched brownish white eggs, laid between March and July and incubated by the female alone for 18–20 days to hatching. The male helps to feed the young.

Feeding

Cinnamon becards pick large insects and spiders off the foliage in flight. They also regularly hover to take small berries.

The Cinnamon Becard recalls, to some extent, the basically allopatric Chestnut-crowned Becard (Pachyramphus castaneus) in being sexually monomorphic and possessing largely rufous-brown plumage, but is distinguished by the lack of the prominent gray head sides that emphasize the chestnut crown in P. castaneus. The present species replaces the latter in extreme northwest South America and through Central America, as far north as southeast Mexico. As in the Chestnut-crowned Becard, subspecific variation in morphology is generally very slight, despite that four subspecies are usually recognized. The Cinnamon Becard is not especially well known in terms of its ecology, although like other members of the genus, its habit of building a conspicuous nest has facilitated study of the species’ breeding biology.