Orange-eyed Thornbird

About the Orange-eyed Thornbird

The orange-eyed thornbird (Phacellodomus erythrophthalmus) is a species of bird in the Furnariinae subfamily of the ovenbird family Furnariidae. It is endemic to Brazil. The orange-eyed thornbird is monotypic. However, what is now the orange-breasted thornbird (P. ferrugineigula) was previously treated as a subspecies of it under the common name red-eyed thornbird. In addition to differences in eye and plumage color, the two taxa have different voices and are locally sympatric in São Paulo state without evidence of interbreeding. For a while after the two were split, some taxonomic systems continued to use "red-eyed" for P. erythrophthalmus and others used it for P. ferrugineigula. The current "orange-eyed" and "orange-breasted" English names were adopted to avoid confusion with the former "red-eyed".

To further complicate matters, for a time in the early twentieth century some authors placed the former two-subspecies red-eyed thornbird alone in genus Drioctistes. Later some authors, but not all, merged that genus into Phacellodomus. A 2011 publication placed the two current species firmly in Phacellodomus.

The orange-eyed thornbird... Wikipedia →