From Opus

Photo by Rogerio Araújo Dias
Brasilia, Brazil

Piaya cayana

[edit] Identification

43-46cm

• Chestnut upperparts and head (paler on the throat)
• Grey lower breast
• Black belly
• White-tipped chestnut uppertail
• Black and white banded undertail
• Bill and bare eyering are yellow
• Red iris
  

Immature birds: grey bill and eyering, brown iris, and less white in the tail.

[edit] Distribution

Central and South America
Central America: Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Trinidad
South America: Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina

Photo by Jim Crosswell
Finca Oro, Costa Rica, January 2009

[edit] Taxonomy

[edit] Subspecies^[1]

Fourteen subspecies share the rather large range:

• P. c. mexicana: Pacific slope of Mexico (Sinaloa to Isthmus of Tehuántepec)
• P. c. thermophila: Eastern Mexico to eastern Panama, north-western Colombia and offshore islands
• P. c. nigricrissa: Western Colombia and western Ecuador to central Peru
• P. c. mehleri: North-eastern Colombia and coastal northern Venezuela east to Paría Peninsula
• P. c. mesura: Colombia east of the Andes and eastern Ecuador
• P. c. circe: Western Venezuela (region south of Lake Maracaibo)
• P. c. cayana: Orinoco Valley of Venezuela to the Guianas and northern Brazil
• P. c. insulana: Trinidad
• P. c. obscura: Brazil south of the Amazon (Rio Juruá to Rio Tapajós)
• P. c. hellmayri: Brazil south of the Amazon (Santarém to Amazon delta)
• P. c. pallescens: Eastern Brazil (Piauí, Pernambuco, northern Bahia and adjacent eastern Goiás)
• P. c. cabinisi: South-central Brazil (central Mato Grosso and adjacent Goiás)
• P. c. macroura: South-eastern Brazil to Paraguay, Uruguay and north-eastern Argentina
• P. c. mogenseni: Southern Bolivia and adjacent north-western Argentina

Photo by Marcelo Padua
Transpantaneira, Brazil

[edit] Habitat

Open types of forest and woodland, canopy and edges, second growth, hedges and semi-open habitats.

[edit] Behaviour

It gets its English name from its squirrel-like way of running along tree branches and leaping from branch to branch without using its wings.

[edit] Diet

The diet includes insects, cicadas, wasps and caterpillars, spiders and small lizards.

[edit] Breeding

It is not a brood parasite.

It builds a cupshaped nest of leaves. The clutch consists of 2 to 3 white eggs which are incubated by both parents.

[edit] References

1. Clements, JF. 2009. The Clements Checklist of Birds of the World. 6th ed., with updates to December 2009. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press. ISBN 978-0801445019.
2. Avibase
3. Wikipedia

• List of references

[edit] External Links