Cinereous Becard

About the Cinereous Becard

The cinereous becard (Pachyramphus rufus) is a species of bird in the family Tityridae, the tityras, becards, and allies. It is found in Brazil, Colombia, French Guiana, Guyana, Panama, Peru, Suriname, Venezuela, and possibly Ecuador.

The cinereous becard was originally described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1779 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux from a specimen collected in Cayenne, French Guiana. The bird was also illustrated in a hand-colored plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle, which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text. Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Muscicapa rufa in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées. The cinereous becard is now placed in the genus Pachyramphus that was introduced in 1839 by the English zoologist George Robert Gray. The generic name is from the Ancient Greek pakhus meaning "stout" or "thick" and rhamphos meaning "bill". The specific epithet rufus is Latin for... Wikipedia →