Yellow-faced Grassquit

Overview

Yellow-faced Grassquit: Tiny bird with olive upperparts, pale olive underparts, black face, breast, and upper belly, yellow eyebrow and throat patch. Found in open fields, brushy thickets, and shrubs. Forages on ground. Weak fluttering flight, alternates rapid wing beats with wings pulled to sides.

Range and Habitat

Yellow-faced Grassquit: Native of the Caribbean and Mexico, rarely straggles into south Florida and southern Texas. Prefers open grassy fields, brushy thickets, and shrubs.

INTERESTING FACTS

The Yellow-faced Grassquit was first described in 1766 by Carolus Linnaeus, Swedish botanist, physician and zoologist.
During courtship, the male vibrates his wings as he sings a subdued song, sitting only 1-2 inches away so she can properly hear him.
It seems to benefit from deforestation, increasing in numbers and expanding its range.
A group of sparrows has many collective nouns, including a "crew", "flutter", "meinie", "quarrel", and "ubiquity" of sparrows.

The Yellow-faced Grassquit has a fairly large range reaching up to generally 940,000 square kilometers. This bird can be found much of the Caribbean as well as parts of North, South and Central America including Bahama, Belize, Cayman Islands, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Puerto Rico, Turks and Caicos Islands, United States, and Venezuela. This species appears in tropical and subtropical shrublands and grasslands as well as pasturelands and deforested regions. The global population of this species has not been quantified, but it is referred to as “common” in portions of its range. Due to this, population trends for the Yellow-faced Grassquit have a present evaluation level of Least Concern.