Slate-coloured Grosbeak

About the Slate-coloured Grosbeak

The slate-colored grosbeak (Saltator grossus) is a species of bird in the family Thraupidae, the tanagers and allies. It is found from Honduras to Panama and in every mainland South American country except Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the slate-colored grosbeak in the supplement to his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected in "America". He used the French name Le gros-bec bleu d'Amérique and the Latin name Coccothraustes americana caerulea. Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognized by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson in his Ornithologie. One of these was the slate-colored grosbeak. Linnaeus included a terse description, coined the binomial name Loxia grossa and cited Brisson's work. The specific name grossa, grossus is Latin for "thick", "rough" or "coarse". The type locality was restricted in 1902 to "Cayenne... Wikipedia →