A small bird (length 12 cm), white below and above black, that
eats mainly seeds. The female birds and the young are brown. They
spend their time in pairs in open fields with long grasses. You
can hear them in the Leiding area and along Vijfde Rijweg. There
you see them sitting on the long stalks of grass or rice plants,
that bend over under their weight. This way they pick seeds with
their beak.
Sometimes they do the splits, grabbing two stalks with two feet
to get near the seeds. On moist and warm days, when the air is
full of flying ants, you can see them catching this food in a
flycatcher manner, just like many other seedeaters.
The male is a good singer and so ends up in cages, a fate shared
with other members of this family like the lined seedeater, the
plumbeous seedeater, the slate-coloured seedeater and many more.
The cage bird experts in Paramaribo recognise them all by their
songs, I never reached that level and needed a long look at the
males to recognise them. Taping and replaying their songs helps
to lure them near to you, making identification more easy.
The photos above were made by Pieter Verheij in Suriname in
January 2007. Below the text are a female by Leo Olmtak in his
garden in Paramaribo and a male by Tinus Knegt in the nature
resort along the Kabalebo both in 2008, as well as a male by
Dennis Binda. The last picture of a female feeding a young by
Ribot and as all these, made in Suriname.
Female feeding a young.
Each small square indicates the observation of at least one (group) of these birds, the medium ones at least 4 observations on different days and the largest ones 10 or more. The color of each square indicates: blue for coastal area, yellow for savanna and red for rainforest.
| Distribution in Suriname (explanation) | |
| Coastal area |  |
| Savanna | |
| Forests |  |
| Mountain forests |  |
| Sipalawini savanna | |
Names in
More pictures of seedeaters in Suriname
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