Black-faced Grassquit

About the Black-faced Grassquit

The black-faced grassquit (Melanospiza bicolor) is a small bird in the family Thraupidae, the tanagers and allies. It is found in the West Indies except Cuba Colombia, Venezuela and islands off its coast, and on islands in the western Caribbean Sea.

The first formal description of the black-faced grassquit was by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1766 in the twelfth edition of his Systema Naturae. He introduced the binomial name Fringilla bicolor. Linnaeus based his description on the "Bahama Sparrow" that was described and illustrated by Mark Catesby in his The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands which was published between 1729 and 1732. By 1970 it had been reassigned to the genus Tiaris. A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2014 found that this genus was polyphyletic and that the black-faced grassquit was closely related to the Saint Lucia black finch in the (then) monospecific genus Melanospiza. In the resulting reorganization of the genera, between 2016 and 2020 taxonomic systems moved the black-faced grassquit to Melanospiza.

The black-faced grassquit has these eight subspecies: The black-faced... Wikipedia →