The collared towhee (''Pipilo ocai'') is a species of

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...

in the family

Passerellidae New World sparrows are a group of mainly New World passerine birds, forming the family Passerellidae. They are seed-eating birds with conical bills, brown or gray in color, and many species have distinctive head patterns. Although they share t ...

that is endemic to

Mexico Mexico ( Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guate ...

. Its natural

habitat In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...

s are subtropical or tropical moist pine-oak

montane forest Montane ecosystems are found on the slopes of mountains. The alpine climate in these regions strongly affects the ecosystem because temperatures fall as elevation increases, causing the ecosystem to stratify. This stratification is a crucia ...

and heavily degraded former

forest A forest is an area of land dominated by trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, and ecological function. The United Nations' ...

. It occupies mountainous terrain from about . This species, at , is a fairly large species. Among standard measurements, the wing chord is , the relatively short

tail The tail is the section at the rear end of certain kinds of animals’ bodies; in general, the term refers to a distinct, flexible appendage to the torso. It is the part of the body that corresponds roughly to the sacrum and coccyx in mammals ...

is , the bill is and the tarsus is . Males weigh from and females from . In terms of weight, and standard bill and tarsal measurements, this is the largest species of emberizid overall, although related species, including Abert's,

canyon A canyon (from ; archaic British English spelling: ''cañon''), or gorge, is a deep cleft between escarpments or cliffs resulting from weathering and the erosive activity of a river over geologic time scales. Rivers have a natural tendency to cut ...

and

California towhee The California towhee (''Melozone crissalis'') is a bird of the family Passerellidae, native to the coastal regions of western Oregon and California in the United States and Baja California Sur in Mexico. The taxonomy of this species has been de ...

s, outrank the collared towhee in overall length, as well as tail and wing length.''CRC Handbook of Avian Body Masses'' by John B. Dunning Jr. (Editor). CRC Press (1992), . In the collared towhee, the chestnut cap, yellowish green upperparts, black cheek and breast band, gray flanks, and white chin are curiously similar to that of the

chestnut-capped brush finch The chestnut-capped brushfinch (''Arremon brunneinucha''), is a Neotropical passerine bird in the New World sparrow Passerellidae Until recently, it was generally placed in the genus '' Buarremon'', while it occasionally has been placed in ''At ...

, but note the latter's thinner breast band and more golden (not whitish) supercilium. The towhee's trilling song interspersed with chips is also very different from the brush-finche's very high-pitched hissing song.

References

External links

{{Taxonbar, from=Q3726410 collared towhee Birds of Mexico Endemic birds of Mexico collared towhee Taxonomy articles created by Polbot Birds of the Sierra Madre del Sur Birds of the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt