Animalia Life

Volatinia jacarina
TAXONOMY
Tanagra jacarina Linnaeus, 1766, northeastern Brazil. Two subspecies.
OTHER COMMON NAMES
French: Jacarini noir; German: Jacariniammer; Spanish: Semillerito Negriazulado.
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS
4–4.3 in (10–4,3 cm); 0.34 oz (9.7 g). Sexes differ in color. Males are uniformly blue-black. Females are brown, paler below, with dark-streaked chest. Juveniles resemble females. Males obtain breeding plumage at about one year of age.
DISTRIBUTION
V. j. jacarina resident from central and eastern Brazil south to central Argentina and northern Chile; V. j. splendens resident from central Mexico south to Venezuela and Colombia; also on Grenada in the Lesser Antilles.
HABITAT
Low, seasonally wet grassland, arid lowland scrub, and weedy fields.
BEHAVIOR
Males sing conspicuously from fences and display by jumping upward with a flick of their wings. In winter, they are found in flocks, some containing a few hundred birds; they sometimes flock with other small seed-eating birds.
FEEDING ECOLOGY AND DIET
The diet is almost exclusively grass seeds, although they eat some insects and berries. They feed by picking seeds from grass seed heads and will pick grit and seeds from roads.
REPRODUCTIVE BIOLOGY
Monogamous. The nest is placed low to the ground to 10 ft (3 m) high. Commonly three, less often two, eggs are laid from May through October. Data on incubation and fledging not available.
CONSERVATION STATUS
Not threatened; locally abundant.
SIGNIFICANCE TO HUMANS
None known.

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