Distribution and Ecology
This bird was encountered in the La Plata Vieja Valley in Huila Department in 1967, but the only recent records are from the upper Coello River basin in Tolima Department (the Toché River is one of the main tributaries of the Coello River). Namely, it is found between 1,000 and 2,500 meters ASL in Cajamarca, Ibagué and Roncesvalles and perhaps Rovira municipalities, in the upper reaches of the Anaime, Cocora, Combeima and Toché river valleys.
It remains locally common in thick secondary vegetation and degraded forest, bordering gallery forest and arracacha (Arracacia xanthorriza) and granadilla (Passiflora spp.) plantations. The Yellow-headed Brush Finch has been observed to take part in a mixed-species feeding flock together with the Common Bush-Tanager (Chlorospingus ophthalmicus), White-throated Tyrannulet (Mecocerculus leucophrys), Golden-fronted Whitestart (Myioborus ornatus), Blue-and-black Tanager (Tangara vassorii), Blue-capped Tanager (Thraupis cyanocephala) and Fawn-breasted Tanager (Pipraeidea melanonota). It is threatened by habitat loss; most areas in the inter-Andean valleys of Colombia have already been converted to agricultural land. The total population is believed to be at least 250 but not more than 1,000 adult birds.
Read more about this topic: Yellow-headed Brush Finch
Famous quotes containing the words distribution and/or ecology:
“The man who pretends that the distribution of income in this country reflects the distribution of ability or character is an ignoramus. The man who says that it could by any possible political device be made to do so is an unpractical visionary. But the man who says that it ought to do so is something worse than an ignoramous and more disastrous than a visionary: he is, in the profoundest Scriptural sense of the word, a fool.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“... the fundamental principles of ecology govern our lives wherever we live, and ... we must wake up to this fact or be lost.”
—Karin Sheldon (b. c. 1945)