All species › Passerines › Tityras, becards and allies › Masked Tityra
Position in the tree Birds Aves › Birds with a flexible palate Neognathae › All other modern birds Neoaves › Landbirds Telluraves › Falcons, parrots and passerines Australaves › Falcons and passerines Eufalconimorphae › Parrots and passerines Psittacopasserae
Masked Tityra | Tityra semifasciata
Maskertityra | Titira enmascarada
The Masked Tityra is a stocky, pale grey bird with black wings and bare red skin around the eye and at the base of the bill. It often perches conspicuously on bare branches above the forest and gives a nasal, grunting call. It is the commonest and most widespread tityra in the guide area, from Mexico to Panama.
Voice
Nasal, grunting or croaking notes, such as zzrt or kwert, often doubled, also in flight; somewhat frog-like.
Recording: Ricardo José Mitidieri — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
20–22 cm. Male silvery pale grey above and almost white below, with a black forehead and a black mask around the eye. Bare red skin around the eye and at the base of the bill; bill red with a black tip. Wings black; tail grey with a broad black band and a pale tip. The female has a brownish-grey head and back without a black mask, but the same red skin and bill.
Confusion species
Black-crowned Tityra Tityra inquisitor is smaller, has an all-black bill without red skin and a black crown without a mask. White cotingas, such as Snowy Cotinga Carpodectes nitidus, are whiter and lack the black wings and red skin.
Habitat
Forest edges, clearings and semi-open country with tall, often dead trees in humid and dry forest, also secondary forest, plantations and pasture with scattered trees, from sea level to about 1500 m. It eats mainly fruit and also large insects. It nests in a cavity high in a dead tree, often an old woodpecker hole.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
On the Pacific slope from southern Sonora and on the Caribbean slope from southern Tamaulipas through southern Mexico and the whole of Central America to Panama. Outside the guide area widespread in South America, south to Bolivia and Brazil.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
At forest edges it often perches in the open on bare treetops: scan them for a grey-and-white bird with a red face. The grunting zzrt often gives away a pair.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Common and tolerant of much disturbance, as long as tall trees with nest holes remain.
Scientific name
Tityra semifasciata | (Spix, 1825)
Spix described the species in 1825 as Pachyrhynchus semifasciatus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Tityra was introduced in 1816 by Vieillot. Tityra probably refers to the tituroi, the satyrs in the train of Pan and Bacchus, after the noisy, quarrelsome behaviour; the origin is not clear-cut. semifasciata is Latin, from semi- 'half' and fasciatus 'banded', after the black band across the tail tip. The specimen the first description was based on came from Pará, Brazil.