Austral Negrito

About the Austral Negrito

The austral negrito or Patagonian negrito (Lessonia rufa) is a species of bird in the family Tyrannidae, the tyrant flycatchers. It is found in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay and has occurred as a vagrant in Peru and on the Falkland Islands.

The austral negrito 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 with the larks in the genus Alauda and coined the binomial name Alauda rufa. The specific epithet is from Latin rufus meaning "red", "ruddy" or "rufous". Gmelin based his description on "L'alouette noire à dos fauve" from Buenos Aires that had been described in 1778 by the French polymath, the Comte de Buffon and illustrated with a hand-colored engraving by François-Nicolas Martinet.

The austral negrito now shares genus Lessonia with the Andean negrito (L. oreas); that genus was erected in 1832 by William Swainson. The two were long considered conspecific. Late in the twentieth century they were separated based primarily on plumage differences, and a 2014 publication added differences in feather structure and... Wikipedia →