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Russet-crowned Motmot | Momotus mexicanus
Bruinkapmotmot | Momoto corona café
The Russet-crowned Motmot is the smallest Momotus species of the guide area and an inhabitant of dry forest and thorn scrub on the Pacific side of Mexico and in the arid interior valleys of Guatemala. It is the only motmot with an entirely rufous crown and nape. Of the four Momotus species in the guide area it is the only one never included in Momotus momota in its former, broad sense.
Voice
A low, rough, rolling krrruk or rrrah, often repeated a few times and heard mainly at dusk and dawn. It lacks the hollow, owl-like hoop call of the other Momotus species.
Recording: Manuel Grosselet — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
30–35 cm, about half of it tail. The crown and nape are rufous, the back, wings and tail green to blue-green. A black mask runs through the eye, bordered below by a thin turquoise line. The underparts are pale green to blue-green, with a small black, blue-edged spot on the breast. The two central tail feathers end in a blue, black-tipped racket on a short bare stretch of shaft. The eye is red. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
Blue-capped Motmot Momotus coeruliceps (north-eastern Mexico) and Lesson's Motmot Momotus lessonii (from Oaxaca and Chiapas southwards) are larger and have a blue crown or a black crown ringed with blue, never a rufous one. Turquoise-browed Motmot Eumomota superciliosa has a green crown, a broad turquoise brow, a rufous back and belly and a much longer bare section in the tail. Rufous Motmot Baryphthengus martii does have a rufous head, but also rufous underparts, and lives in humid forest from Honduras to Panama, outside the range of Russet-crowned Motmot.
Habitat
Dry and semi-deciduous forest, thorn scrub, gallery forest and wooded ravines, also forest edges and pasture with trees; from sea level to about 1500 m, locally higher in the Balsas basin and Oaxaca. It sits still for long periods in the lower and middle layers, flicking its tail. It eats large insects, spiders and small lizards, and also fruit. It nests in a self-dug tunnel in a bank, road cut or ravine wall.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Endemic to the guide area. In Mexico on the Pacific side from southern Sonora and south-western Chihuahua through Sinaloa, Nayarit, Jalisco, Colima, Michoacán and Guerrero to Oaxaca, inland into the Balsas basin (Morelos, Puebla, México State), and in the dry interior valleys of Chiapas. In Guatemala in the arid Motagua Valley (Zacapa, El Progreso) and locally in Huehuetenango. Absent from the Gulf slope and the Yucatán Peninsula. Not present outside the guide area.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Around San Blas in Nayarit, in the dry forest at Chamela in Jalisco and in the Motagua Valley near Zacapa in Guatemala. A perched bird often gives itself away by flicking or swinging its tail.
Conservation status
Least Concern. Common in most of its range and also present in degraded dry forest and semi-open farmland with trees.
Scientific name
Momotus mexicanus | Swainson, 1827
Swainson described the species in 1827 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Momotus was introduced in 1760 by Brisson. Momotus comes from 'momot', a corruption (Nieremberg, 1635) of an onomatopoeic Nahuatl (Aztec) word for a blue-capped tropical bird. mexicanus is Latin for 'Mexican', after the country where the type was collected. The specimen the first description was based on came from Temascaltepec, State of México, Mexico.