Buffy-fronted Seedeater

sporophila frontalis

Emberizidae · Emberizine Sparrows

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

The account

Description

12.5 cm. A large seedeater of bamboo forests. Bill bone colored, Head with broad white front. Long whitish-buff malar streak and postocular streak. Throat whitish. Belly buffy-yellowish. Light olive chest and flanks. Greenish-brown upperparts. Wings with two buff bars and speculum. The female does not show any head markings and is browner above, dull buffy ochre below and whiter on the belly with two buff wingbars.

The immature is drab and without a white front.

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 Buffy-fronted Seedeater at 7 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

Song a characteristic loud, far carrying and often repeated 'jeje jet' (0.4 sec).

Behavior

Forages in middle stratum of bamboo and trees. A bamboo seed specialist.

Habitat and status

Now on the brink of extinction due to deforestation (2}. Found in extensive forested areas that are interspersed with large areas of Guadua bamboo, forest edge, breaks. Sometimes appears singly or in large to small groups in places where the bamboo bears seeds then disappears some weeks or months later.

Distribution

Throughout. Recorded from the humid coastal forests and serras. In Estado São Paulo from Fazenda Intervales, Ubatuba, Picinguaba (a cage bird, Willis and Remold, unpubl.), Iporanga; there are old records from Mato Dentro, Alto da Serra, Mogi das Cruzes (⁴⁰), Juquia (1961), Iguape (1977), Serra Bocaina (1990), Ilha Do Cardoso (¹²²). In Estado Rio de Janeiro found in the Serra Mantiqueira, Serra dos Orgãos, Cachoeira de Macacu (a cage bird, December 2004, Remold unpubl.), Nova Friburgo, Cantagalo (⁴⁰), Itaguai, Teresopolis, Tijuca National Park, formerly also Barra da Tijuca and Marambaia, now southern suburbs of Rio de Janeiro (⁴⁰), Desengano State Park near Santos (²).

From 1000 to 1500 meters (¹³³).

Taxonomy notes

Considered to be vulnerable / rare in the Red Data Book (¹²²). This species should be considered endangered. It is difficult to understand from where the sometimes quite large groups appear. For more information see ¹⁸¹

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. Fazenda Intervales, 10/25/00. Cloudy, 20°C. Primary forest with bamboo. With Attila phoenicurus, Basileuterus leucoblepharus, Turdus albicollis, Carpornis cucullatus.
Call. Fazenda Intervales, 10/25/00. Cloudy, 20°C. Primary forest with bamboo. With Saltator similis.

Recording files on the disc

11141.mp3 Call. Fazenda Intervales, 10/25/00. Cloudy, 20°C. Primary forest with bamboo. With Attila phoenicurus, Basileuterus leucoblepharus, Turdus albicollis, Carpornis cucullatus.
295.mp3 Call. Fazenda Intervales, 10/25/00. Cloudy, 20°C. Primary forest with bamboo. With Saltator similis.

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	sporophila frontalis	Buffy-fronted Seedeater	Emberizidae
CLEMENTS	sporophila frontalis	Buffy-fronted Seedeater	Emberizidae
AOU_HM	sporophila frontalis	Buffy-fronted Seedeater	Emberizidae

Open questions about this bird

Recovered evidence that has not been settled. It is published because leaving it out would misrepresent what the discs contain.

Later listening, kept separate from the disc's own claims

content_441012 — historical_target: SPOROPHILA FRONTALIS (historical_source)

How later review relates to this bird's record

Sources disagree XW_0009 — designated_target_species

Historical label: SPOROPHILA FRONTALIS

conflicts · preserve historical target; do not replace with later identification

Reported later result confirms contextual Attila, not the designated target; original handwriting unavailable.

Source details

Identifier on this site: seb_species_0419
Account identifier: seb_account_0419
Account number on the disc: 419
Source edition: CD03 / 2006 package
Original taxonomy scheme: WORLD
Structure status: heuristic; decoded_account_text and segment JSON remain authoritative