SAÍ-CANÁRIO (AS KNOWN IN BRAZIL)

Thlypopsis sordida

The Orange-Headed Tanager is a passerine bird from the Thraupidae family. Its song resembles and vaguely reminds one of the true Saffron Finch's song, but it's less intense. It measures about 5,3 inches. It has plumage, a yellowish-orange head, and a grayish-green body.

It feeds on fruits, seeds, and insects captured among the foliage. The nest is built with plant fibers like cotton, spider webs, and thin twigs. It lays 2 or 3 eggs, bluish white with brown spots, incubated by the female. When the chicks hatch, they are fed by the couple. It lives solitarily and in pairs during the breeding period. In August and September, groups of up to 8 birds are formed. It occupies the highest and middle strata of the forest, rarely going to the ground. It moves in a typical manner, zigzagging up through the branches and then almost releasing its body, falling towards the trunk of the next tree.

It is widely distributed in South America and in a large part of Brazil in the Northeast, Central-West, Southeast, and South regions. In the North, it's more restricted to the floodplain environments of the Solimões River and some of its major tributaries, such as the Madeira River (Amazonas, Rondônia).