The Story
I photographed this 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. Its range takes in Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela as well as Central America, the Guianas and Trinidad and Tobago. Like other Sporophila seedeaters, it has a stubby, conical bill adapted for feeding on seeds, and in most species of the genus the sexes look strikingly different. IUCN lists it as Least Concern.
I made this frame with a Canon R5 and the RF 800mm f/11 plus the RF 1.4x extender, at 1/1000 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