One of the joys of birding (if we’re honest with ourselves) is seeing a new species, and especially one that we didn’t know existed but is so strikingly coloured or patterned that we know right away that it’s not going to be too hard to put a name to it once we either open up a field-guide or go on the internet.

Such a description must surely apply to the two birds in the photos below, which I took in Sao Paulo’s Ibirapuera Park yesterday (a 345 acres/140 ha very popular open space in the city which has been likened on many occasions and by many tourists as Sao Paulo’s equivalent to New York’s ‘Central Park’). Their cherry-red heads are so bursting with colour that some has escaped and spilled down over the snowy-white underparts, a complex pattern of grey and jet-black feathers decorate the mantle, and the black flight feathers are fringed with a brilliant white. Not also the bill is distinctively bi-coloured - a dark grey upper mandible and an ivory-white lower. These are unquestionably Red-cowled Cardinals Paroaria dominicana, a Brazilian endemic that - in a country where small finches with exquisite voices are bought and sold for thousands of dollars - is a highly popular staple of the rampant wild bird trade.

Native to the dry forests of eastern Brazil, the Red-cowled Cardinals in Sao Paulo (and in Rio de Janiero) are either introduced or feral escapes [see the comment from local ornithologist Rick Simpson below] and therefore not strictly countable as a ‘new species’ but they are a gorgeous sight whatever their origin. Taxonomically they seem to have been moved around a fair bit too, originally being thought to be Cardinalids, and placed by the IOC (Gill, F. and M.Wright. 2006. Birds of the World: Recommended English Names. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press) in the Emberizidae below brush-finches. However BirdLife International states that the the genus Paroaria was transferred to the family Thraupidae (tanagers) following a review in 2007.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My good friend Jack Cole has also commented below that Red-cowled Cardinal is very similar to a bird he saw in Hawaii last year - the Red-crested Cardinal Paroaria coronata. The two species are very closely related, and the Red-crested Cardinal, like the Red-cowled, is heavily exploited by the wild bird trade: originally from southern Brazil and Argentina, the Red-crested Cardinal was introduced to Hawaii in 1929.

Just how similar the two species are can be seen from the photo Jack sent me, which I’ve posted below.

Red-crested Cardinal Paraoria coronata, Maui, Hawaii. Photo copyright Jack Cole