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Nicaraguan Seed Finch | Sporophila nuttingi
Nicaraguaanse zaadkraker | Semillero nicaragüense
The Nicaraguan Seed Finch is a black seed-eater with a very heavy, pale pink bill. It lives in wet, grassy terrain in the Caribbean lowlands and is scarce and local. It occurs only in the guide area, from Nicaragua to western Panama.
Voice
Song a slow, rich, somewhat thrush-like series of whistled notes and trills, lower and slower than that of Thick-billed Seed Finch. Call a sharp chek.
Recording: Patrick ODonnell — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
14–15 cm. Bill very heavy and broad, pale pink to flesh-coloured or ivory. Male entirely black, with a small white patch at the base of the primaries and white underwing coverts. Female warm brown, slightly paler and more rufous below, with a duller bill. Young birds resemble females.
Confusion species
Thick-billed Seed Finch Sporophila funerea is smaller and has a black bill. Blue-black Grosbeak Cyanoloxia cyanoides is blue-black, has a black bill and lives in forest.
Habitat
Wet grassland, marshy pasture, overgrown fields and scrub along forest edges and rivers in the humid lowlands, mostly below 600 m. It eats seeds of grasses and sedges, which it cracks with its heavy bill.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Caribbean lowlands of Nicaragua and Costa Rica to western Panama (Bocas del Toro), locally also on the Pacific slope of Costa Rica and western Panama. There are also records from Honduras and Guatemala; it is unclear whether these involve established populations or escaped cage birds. It does not occur outside the guide area.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Most likely in wet, grassy terrain with scattered shrubs in the Caribbean lowlands of Costa Rica, for example around Tortuguero and Caño Negro. Singing males often sit on an exposed perch above the grass.
Conservation status
Not threatened (LC). Scarce and local; trapped for the cage-bird trade. It partly benefits from deforestation, as new grassland provides suitable habitat.
Scientific name
Sporophila nuttingi | (Ridgway, 1884)
Ridgway described the species in 1884 as Oryzoborus nuttingi; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Sporophila was introduced in 1844 by Cabanis. Sporophila is Greek, from sporos 'seed' and philos 'lover': 'seed-lover'. nuttingi honours the American zoologist Charles Cleveland Nutting (1858–1927), who collected in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. The specimen the first description was based on came from Los Sábalos, Nicaragua.