Black-headed Grosbeak, Pheucticus melanocephalus

Black-headed Grosbeak, Pheucticus melanocephalus maculatus, Male. Photograph taken within a residential community in Alamos, Sonora, April 2018. Photograph and identification courtesy of David F. Smith, Alamos, Sonora.

Black-headed Grosbeak, Pheucticus melanocephalus maculatus, Male. Photograph taken within a residential community in Hereford, Arizona, May 2007. Photograph and identification courtesy of Bob Behrstock, Sierra Vista, Arizona (naturewideimages.com).

Black-headed Grosbeak, Pheucticus melanocephalus maculatus, Female. Photograph taken within a residential community in Alamos, Sonora, April 2018. Photograph and identification courtesy of David F. Smith, Alamos, Sonora.

The Black-headed Grosbeak, Pheucticus melanocephalus maculatus, is one of two subspecies of Black-headed Grosbeak, both of which are found in Mexico. They are a member of the Cardinalidae Family of Cardinals and Allies, which has forty-nine members placed in fourteen genera, and one of six global species of the Pheucticus Genus. They are known in Mexico as picogrueso cabecinegro.

The Black-headed Grosbeak is a mid-sized songbird. They are sexually dimorphic with the males being brighter colored than females. The adult males have black on their heads, black wings, and tails with sharply contrasting white spots, a brilliant cinnamon breast, rump, nape and flanks, and a patch of yellow on the belly. The females have a brown head with a buff to white crown and eye-stripe, a pale chin, brown wings and a tail with indistinct buff spots and thinly streaked body plumage that is dull cinnamon to buff with variable amounts of yellow. Their bill is brown or slate in color with a bluish white or cream colored tip, their iris is greenish-brown, and their legs and feet are dull gray or slate and their claws are brown.

The Black-headed Grosbeak are found in diverse habitats including riparian and floodplain habitats that include aspen groves, oak savanna, pine forests, pinyon-juniper woodlands, deciduous growth in canyons and mountain valleys, and suburban developments and orchards at elevations up to 2,100 m (6,900 feet). Their diet consists of insects and spiders, numerous fruits and weed seeds. They are socially monogamous. They have life spans of up to twenty-five years. The Black-headed Grosbeak has been poorly studied and very little has been documented about their biology and behavioral patterns.

The Black-headed Grosbeak is found throughout the northern latitudes of Mexico ranging from the United States border south to Oaxaca. They are absent from the coastal regions of the Atlantic Slope in Tamaulipas and Veracruz and in the Pacific Slope from Jalisco, Michoacán and Guerrero. The maculatus subspecies breeds in northern Baja California and winters within Baja California Sur and within the Pacific Slope from southern Sonora south the Jalisco and Michoacán and in the interior from Zacatecas to Oaxaca and on the Atlantic Slope from Tamaulipas to Oaxaca. They are year-round residents in the southern portions of their range and complete migrants in the northern portion.

From a conservation perspective the Black-headed Grosbeak is currently considered to be of Least Concern, with stable, widely-distributed populations. They are relatively tolerant of human developments. They are sold on a limited basis as cage birds.