The black-headed saltator (''Saltator atriceps'') is a seed-eating bird in the tanager family Thraupidae. It breeds from central

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

to eastern

Panama Panama ( , ; es, link=no, Panamá ), officially the Republic of Panama ( es, República de Panamá), is a transcontinental country spanning the southern part of North America and the northern part of South America. It is bordered by Cos ...

. This bird is on average long and weighs . The adult has a slate-grey head with a whitish

supercilium The supercilium is a plumage feature found on the heads of some bird species. It is a stripe which runs from the base of the bird's beak above its eye, finishing somewhere towards the rear of the bird's head.Dunn and Alderfer (2006), p. 10 Also ...

. The upperparts are yellowish green, the underparts are pale grey, and the throat is white edged with black. The thick convex bill is black and the legs are brown. Young birds are duller and have mottling on the breast and brown markings on the underparts. This species is similar to the

buff-throated saltator The buff-throated saltator (''Saltator maximus'') is a seed-eating bird in the tanager family Thraupidae. It breeds from southeastern Mexico to western Ecuador and northeastern Brazil. The buff-throated saltator is on average long and weighs . ...

but is larger and has a darker head and paler under parts with a yellow patch on the throat. The common call is a raucous . The song is a loud scratchy ''cher cher jur jur weeee'', often given by males as a duet. The black-headed saltator is a species of dense vegetation. The black-headed saltator feeds on fruit, buds,

nectar Nectar is a sugar-rich liquid produced by plants in glands called nectaries or nectarines, either within the flowers with which it attracts pollinating animals, or by extrafloral nectaries, which provide a nutrient source to animal mutualists ...

, and slow-moving insects. It forages at low and mid-levels, sometimes with

mixed species flocks A mixed-species feeding flock, also termed a mixed-species foraging flock, mixed hunting party or informally bird wave, is a flock of usually insectivorous birds of different species that join each other and move together while foraging. These are ...

. The two black-marked pale blue eggs per

clutch A clutch is a mechanical device that engages and disengages power transmission, especially from a drive shaft to a driven shaft. In the simplest application, clutches connect and disconnect two rotating shafts (drive shafts or line shafts). ...

measure some long by about wide and weigh about each. They are laid in a bulky grass-lined cup nesting up to high in a thicket between April and July.

Footnotes

References

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External links

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black-headed saltator The black-headed saltator (''Saltator atriceps'') is a seed-eating bird in the tanager family Thraupidae. It breeds from central Mexico to eastern Panama. This bird is on average long and weighs . The adult has a slate-grey head with a whit ...

Birds of Central America Birds of Mexico Birds of the Sierra Madre del Sur Birds of the Yucatán Peninsula

Taxa named by René Lesson