Black-faced Grassquit

The black-faced grassquit (Melanospiza bicolor) is a small bird. It is recognized as a tanager closely related to Darwin's finches. It breeds in the West Indies except Cuba, on Tobago but not Trinidad, and along the northern coasts of Colombia and Venezuela. == Taxonomy == The first formal description of the black-faced grassquit was by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1766 in the twelfth edition of his Systema Naturae. He introduced the binomial name Fringilla bicolor. Linnaeus based his description on the "Bahama Sparrow" that was described and illustrated by Mark Catesby in his The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands which was published between 1729 and 1732. The black-faced grassquit was traditionally placed in the genus Tiaris. A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2014 found that this genus was polyphyletic and that the black-faced grassquit was closely related to the Saint Lucia black finch in the monospecific genus Melanospiza. In the resulting reorganization of the genera, the black-faced grassquit was moved to Melanospiza. Eight subspecies are recognised: M. b. bicolor (Linnaeus, 1766) – Bahamas and islands off north Cuba M. b. marchii (Baird, SF, 1864) – Jamaica and Hispaniola M. b. omissa (Jardine, 1847) –…