Saffron-cowled blackbird

The saffron-cowled blackbird is a species of bird in the family Icteridae. It is the only species placed in the genus Xanthopsar. It has bright yellow underparts and black or dark brown upperparts. It is found in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and in Uruguay at the Quebrada de los Cuervos. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical dry lowland grassland, subtropical or tropical seasonally wet or flooded lowland grassland, and pastureland. It is threatened by habitat loss.

Taxonomy

The saffron-cowled blackbird was formally described in 1788 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the orioles in the genus Oriolus and coined the binomial name Oriolus flavus. Gmelin based his account on the "Troupiale jaune d'Antigue" that had been described and illustrated in 1776 by the French naturalist Pierre Sonnerat in his book Voyage à la Nouvelle Guinée. There was confusion over the origin of Sonnerat's specimen, but in 1937 Austrian ornithologist Carl Hellmayr designated Río de la Plata as the type locality. The saffron-cowled blackbird is now the only species placed in the genus Xanthopsar that was introduced in 1901 by the American ornithologist Robert Ridgway. The genus name combines the Ancient Greek xanthos meaning "yellow" with psar meaning "starling". The specific epithet flavus is Latin meaning "yellow". The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised. A molecular genetic study has shown that the saffron-cowled blackbird is closely related to the two marshbirds in the genus Pseudoleistes.