The Story
I photographed this Blue-black Grassquit (Volatinia jacarina) at La Huerta Hotel at Lago Calima, in Yotoco, Valle del Cauca, Colombia. The Blue-black Grassquit also eats small amounts of berries and insects. It lives in shrubby, weedy fields, thickets, field edges, grassy fields and roadsides. It forages mostly on the ground but also takes seeds straight from the grasses. Lago Calima is a reservoir of about 19 square kilometers, built for a hydroelectric project and later taken over by the regional environmental agency, the CVC. IUCN lists the Blue-black Grassquit as Least Concern, with an increasing population.
I made this frame with a Pentax K-1 and the HD Pentax-D FA 150-450mm f/4.5-5.6, at 1/1000 sec, f/5.6, ISO 400. In 2024 the CVC declared more than 18,000 hectares of the upper Calima basin a new protected area, linking it with the Río Bravo forest reserve and the Páramo El Duende regional park.
©2019 Adam Rainoff Photographer
The bird
The Blue-black Grassquit (Volatinia jacarina) belongs to the family Thraupidae (Tanagers and Allies) in the eBird/Clements taxonomy.
Source: eBird.org (opens in a new tab)
Conservation
Least Concern on the IUCN Red List (assessment published 2021), with the population trend listed as increasing. Source: IUCN Red List
