Description
The Scarlet-rumped Cacique has sexual dimorphism like many Icteridae, though it mainly concerns size in this species. Males are 23 cm (9 in) long and weigh 68 g (2.4 oz), while the female is 20 cm (8 in) long and weighs 53 g (1.9 oz); they follow Bergmann's Rule, with the Subtropical Caciques of the cooler uplands being larger. This cacique is a slim long-winged bird, with a relatively short tail, blue eyes, and a pale yellow pointed bill. It has mainly black plumage, apart from a scarlet patch on the lower back and upper rump. The female is smaller and a duller black than the male, and the juvenile bird has a brownish tone to the plumage and a brownish-orange rump.
The song of these birds is a pleasant wheee-whee-whee-whee-wheet, but the Pacific Cacique has a descending melancholy wheeo-wheeo-wheeo-wheeo. The calls birds give to members differ between the three groups: those of the Subtropical Cacique sound rather atypical for icterids and more like the chatter of an excited Great Thrush (Turdus fuscater). The Scarlet-rumped Cacique in the narrowest sense has a burry pleeo; the Pacific Cacique has a sweeter keeo or a shree.
Read more about this topic: Scarlet-rumped Cacique
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“It [Egypt] has more wonders in it than any other country in the world and provides more works that defy description than any other place.”
—Herodotus (c. 484–424 B.C.)
“The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a “global village” instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)
“Do not require a description of the countries towards which you sail. The description does not describe them to you, and to- morrow you arrive there, and know them by inhabiting them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)