Black-masked Finch

coryphaspiza melanotis

Emberizidae · Emberizine Sparrows

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

The account

Description

13.5 cm. Upper bill black, mandible yellow. Crown and head sides black. Long superciliary white. Nape gray, striped black. Back light olive-brown, striped black. Shoulders and edgings of primaries yellowish. Underparts white with a black patch on either side of the chest. Tail long and graded with the outer tail feathers broadly tipped white.

The female is less brightly marked than the male. Head grayish. Crown brownish, streaked black. Wing edgings greenish-yellow. Less white in tail.

Male Disc 3 · 2006
Female Disc 3 · 2006

Each plate is labelled with the disc's own caption.

Where it was recorded

The discs' own checklists select Black-masked Finch at 2 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.

Itirapina ITSB
Santa Barbara do Rio Pardo SNSB

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

Call high 'ti'; song a four-syllable high pitched whistle, 'ticeriliit" (¹¹⁹). In the sonogram it shows more complexity (picture 3). It has a frequency of approximately 7000 Hz and actually consists of 7 -8 notes which last all together about 0.3 sec.

Behavior

Forages on the ground of tall grass areas. Perches higher when singing. In pairs or single.

Habitat and status

Locally common, but generally hard to find. Lives in tall grass areas with some small bushes in the cerrado belt. This biome is now rather scattered due to burning and overgrazing.

Distribution

Inland Estado São Paulo e.g. at Aguas de Santa Barbara (60 km W of Botucatu), Broa Reservatorio Lobo, about 20 km S of São Carlos (¹¹⁹); can be regularly found at Itirapina. To 1000 meters

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

Song, November 14, 1994.Itirapina, campo sujo, open grassland. 25°C, some wind, sunny,few clouds.
Song, November 15, 1994, Itirapina, open grassland, 250C, sunny, with Emberizoides herbicola.

Recording files on the disc

10059.mp3 Song, November 14, 1994.Itirapina, campo sujo, open grassland. 25°C, some wind, sunny,few clouds.
3228.mp3 Song, November 15, 1994, Itirapina, open grassland, 250C, sunny, with Emberizoides herbicola.

More images

song, Itirapina, Oct. 1994 Disc 3 · 2006

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.

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	coryphaspiza melanotis	Black-masked Finch	Emberizidae
CLEMENTS	coryphaspiza melanotis	Black-masked Finch	Emberizidae
AOU_HM	coryphaspiza melanotis	Black-masked Finch	Emberizidae

Source details

Identifier on this site: seb_species_0411
Account identifier: seb_account_0411
Account number on the disc: 411
Source edition: CD03 / 2006 package
Original taxonomy scheme: WORLD
Structure status: heuristic; decoded_account_text and segment JSON remain authoritative