The Story
I photographed this juvenile Ruddy-breasted Seedeater (Sporophila minuta) near El Rosario, in the Patía valley of Nariño, Colombia. It belongs to the tanager family and lives in dry savanna, seasonally wet grassland and degraded former forest, from Mexico to northern South America. It is found in Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela as well as Central America and the Guianas. Like other Sporophila seedeaters, it has a stubby, conical bill adapted for feeding on seeds, and females and immatures of the genus can be very hard to identify to species. IUCN lists it as Least Concern.
I photographed it with a Canon R5 and the RF 800mm f/11 plus the RF 1.4x extender, at 1/500 sec, f/16, ISO 1600. In 2018, bird monitoring by the Humboldt Institute in the dry forests of Mercaderes, Taminango and El Rosario recorded 80 species.
©2022 Adam Rainoff Photographer
The bird
The Ruddy-breasted Seedeater (Sporophila minuta) 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 decreasing. Source: IUCN Red List