Description
The male is in average 28 cm long and weighs about 104 g, with the female 23 cm long and weighing 60 g approximately. The Yellow-rumped Cacique is a slim bird, with a long tail, blue eyes, and a pale yellow pointed bill. It has mainly black plumage, apart from a bright yellow rump, tail base, lower belly and wing "epaulets". The female is duller black than the male, and the juvenile bird resembles the female, but has dark eyes and a brown bill base.
The song of the male Yellow-rumped Cacique is a brilliant mixture of fluting notes with cackles, wheezes and sometimes mimicry. There are also many varied calls, and an active colony can be heard from a considerable distance.
It has three subspecies:
- Cacicus cela cela – East of the Andes, from the Santa Marta coast of Colombia to central Bolivia and eastern Brazil.
- Cacicus cela vitellinus – Panama Canal Zone to the base of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and the central Magdalena Valley of Colombia. First recorded in the Serranía de las Quinchas on January 17, 2006.
- Cacicus cela flavicrissus – Eastern Andes foothills from Esmeraldas Province (Ecuador) to Tumbes Province (Peru).
The latter two may be a separate species, Saffron-rumped Cacique.
Read more about this topic: Yellow-rumped Cacique
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“The great object in life is Sensation—to feel that we exist, even though in pain; it is this “craving void” which drives us to gaming, to battle, to travel, to intemperate but keenly felt pursuits of every description whose principal attraction is the agitation inseparable from their accomplishment.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“Why does philosophy use concepts and why does faith use symbols if both try to express the same ultimate? The answer, of course, is that the relation to the ultimate is not the same in each case. The philosophical relation is in principle a detached description of the basic structure in which the ultimate manifests itself. The relation of faith is in principle an involved expression of concern about the meaning of the ultimate for the faithful.”
—Paul Tillich (1886–1965)