My friend Kay and I were sitting on my terrace one afternoon. Kay has been trying to teach me about the various plants in my new garden, possibly to little or no avail. For whatever reason, their names are not sticking in my head. To redeem myself in some fashion, when a familiar bird landed by a plant whose name I could not recall, I said: Look, Kay, there’s a white-collared seedeater. She looked at me, mildly impressed, so I added helpfully, it eats the seeds of that plant. Kay then asked, well, what does it eat when the plant isn’t seeding? She had me there…first I actually had no idea that plants are not always seeding, and I certainly had no clue what the white-collared seedeater eats when it isn’t dining in my yard. So, I set out to find out.
What I did know is this: the white-collared seedeater is a distinctive little bird, and I think of it as resembling a priest with its broad white collar and darker colored back. There are variations in the look of this bird, much as there is in the garb of varied denominations of priests and ministers. Western Mexico favors the dark backed version, which here can be almost black, but in other parts of Mexico a brownish gray. There is a wash of buff on the throat and under-parts, and breeding plumage produces more pronounced colors, by adding a cheery cinnamon to those areas as well as to its rump. There are swaths of white in their wings. As is often the case, the female is the drabber version. Both have stubby conical bills, all the better for eating seeds.
I thought they were merely members of the finch family as finches are notorious seedeaters. But these birds come from a large subfamily and they all eat seeds. This subgroup includes sparrows, towhees, the coolly named blue-black grassquit and others. In non breeding season, when they are not being territorial and protecting their mates and young, they will join hundreds of other seed eating birds to feast at weedy fields and scrubby second growth pastures. Of course, since this is high breeding season this solitary male stopped by my well-manicured garden to dine delicately on a daisy/aster like plant whose name I still do not know.
But the salient question remains…what do they eat besides seeds? An intensive internet search turned up few clues, with several sites noting that little is known about their food habits. And along the way I learned several other interesting facts about the white-collared seedeater. They are rarely found in the US, and then only in the south Texas area. Their range extends through Mexico to Panama where they live year round. They build their dainty cup nests a little above the ground in the crotches of shrubs. They may have 3 to 5 eggs in a clutch.
I learned more about the Emperzid family to which they belong, that they are ground dwelling songbirds and there are about 319 species in 72 genera. But most interesting is that I learned that during breeding season they also eat insects. They feed insects to their young, possibly because the young birds need to wait until their sturdy conical bills can develop to be able munch heartily on seed shells.
So, my question was answered completely. That is, until I spotted another white-collared seedeater in my garden, climbing a plant stem and plucking the seeds directly from the seed head. He was finely dressed in breeding plumage, but was not foraging for insects to feed a hungry family back in the nest. A bachelor, perhaps?
