Rufous-browed Peppershrike

About the Rufous-browed Peppershrike

The rufous-browed peppershrike (Cyclarhis gujanensis) is a passerine bird in the vireo family. It is widespread and often common in woodland, forest edge, and cultivation with some tall trees from Mexico and Trinidad south to Argentina and Uruguay.

The rufous-browed peppershrike was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it in the genus Tanagra and coined the binomial name Tanagra gujanensis. The specific epithet is derived from the type locality, the Guianas. Gmelin based his account on "Le verderoux" from French Guiana that had been described in 1778 by the French polymath Comte de Buffon in his multivolume Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux. The rufous-browed peppershrike is now placed with the black-billed peppershrike in the genus Cyclarhis that was introduced in 1824 by William Swainson.

Twenty two subspecies are recognised: C. g. septentrionalis Phillips, AR, 1991 – east Mexico C. g. flaviventris Lafresnaye, 1842 – southeast Mexico (except Yucatán Peninsula), Guatemala and north Honduras C. g. yucatanensis Ridgway, 1887 – Yucatán Peninsula (southeast... Wikipedia →