Black-capped Donacobius

donacobius atricapilla

Troglodytidae · Wrens

Disc 2 · 2001 listed
Disc 3 · 2006 listed
Disc 1 · 2011 listed

The account

Description

22 cm. A conspicuous denizen of marshes. Back dark chestnut brown with black head and neck, rump lighter. White speculum at base of the primaries. Long white tipped tail feathers. Underside orange buff with fine black cross barring. Eye yellow.

Juveniles have a white post-ocular patch.

The disc records this picture against the bird without a caption. Disc 3 · 2006

Where it was recorded

The discs' own checklists select Black-capped Donacobius at 5 localities.

Historical checklist localities on the disc's own area map — the red dots the original program drew, placed by its recovered projection. Not a range map: it shows the places whose checklists record the bird, nothing more.

How the map was made

The original program computed each red dot at display time from the locality's coordinates, using its map library and one of five base maps drawn for the screen widths of the day. That library's projection — an oblique rotation of the sphere about the map's own centre, 23.7°S 47.4°W — was read from the program and checked against the graticule the same program drew into the base maps: it reproduces every grid intersection to within about a pixel. The dots here use that projection on the 1280-pixel base map, with the coordinates the discs record. Nothing was placed by hand, no modern map data was used, and a place whose coordinate is incomplete, out of range or beyond the map's edge is listed rather than guessed.

The discs carried location maps only; none shows a distribution or range.

Voice

Loud and vocal, usually a loud 'woit woit woit' (vocalization # 1 and a harsh 'jeeeeh' (vocalization # 2). The interesting display is described in (¹¹⁹).

Behavior

Conspicuously perches on vegetation in marshes and oxbows; seems to forage for insects in swamp vegetation.

Breeding

Nests in Southeast Brazil. October-January.

Habitat and status

Regular in floating vegetation in swamps and oxbow lakes, ponds, in reed beds, in trees and scrub adjacent to reed beds and reedy borders of iguarapes, pairs sing duets from the top of the vegetation.

Distribution

Throughout but I don't know of any observations in Estado São Paulo south of Iguape. Below 600 meters (¹³³).

Decoded from the disc's own bytes. Each part is shown under the heading the disc files it under, and the wording, spelling and punctuation are the author's.

Vocalizations

Call, song. Rio Doçe 11/4/00. Cloudy, 30°C. Primary forest edge and cattail swamp. With Rhytipterna simplex, Thamnophilus palliatus.
Calls, Facienda Amazonica, Manu NP, Madre de Dios, Peru, swamp within forest, July 17, 2001, cloudy, hot, 30°C. With Leptoptila verreauxi.
Calls, South Rupuruni District, Guayana, LNS #106442, recorded by D. Finch, with Sicalis luteola, Emberizoides herbicola.

Recording files on the disc

15030.mp3 Call, song. Rio Doçe 11/4/00. Cloudy, 30°C. Primary forest edge and cattail swamp. With Rhytipterna simplex, Thamnophilus palliatus.
8840.mp3 Calls, Facienda Amazonica, Manu NP, Madre de Dios, Peru, swamp within forest, July 17, 2001, cloudy, hot, 30°C. With Leptoptila verreauxi.
4809.mp3 Calls, South Rupuruni District, Guayana, LNS #106442, recorded by D. Finch, with Sicalis luteola, Emberizoides herbicola.

Across the three discs

The work was published on three discs — Disc 2 in 2001, Disc 3 in 2006 and Disc 1 in 2011. Where they differ, that is a difference between historical releases, and it is never merged away. The 2011 disc is not treated as correcting the earlier ones.

Which discs list this bird

Disc 2 · 2001 — in this disc's bird list
Disc 3 · 2006 — in this disc's bird list
Disc 1 · 2011 — in this disc's bird list

How that was established

Disc 2 · 2001: aux_nonzero;local_checklist_byte45_flag_1
Disc 3 · 2006: aux_nonzero;local_checklist_byte45_flag_1
Disc 1 · 2011: aux_nonzero;local_checklist_byte45_flag_1

The disc's own record fields that place the bird on its list: a non-empty entry in the species table, and the byte that marks it as selected on a local checklist.

Names by release

Black-capped Donacobius donacobius atricapillus Disc 2 · 2001
Black-capped Donacobius donacobius atricapilla Disc 3 · 2006, Disc 1 · 2011

The account in the Disc 1 · 2011 revision

The 2011 Disc 1 revision carries this account text unchanged from the Disc 3 release.

The work's own taxonomy

The discs carried three parallel name schemes. All three are shown as recovered; none is a modern taxonomy and none has been updated.

Scheme	Scientific name	English name	Family
WORLD	donacobius atricapilla	Black-capped Donacobius	Troglodytidae
CLEMENTS	donacobius atricapilla	Black-capped Donacobius	Troglodytidae
AOU_HM	donacobius atricapilla	Black-capped Donacobius	Troglodytidae

Source details

Identifier on this site: seb_species_0316
Account identifier: seb_account_0316
Account number on the disc: 316
Source edition: CD03 / 2006 package
Original taxonomy scheme: WORLD
Structure status: heuristic; decoded_account_text and segment JSON remain authoritative