Endangered
Jamaican Blackbird
Nesopsar nigerrimus
Jamaican Blackbird is a perching bird in the family Icteridae (order Passeriformes) — Nesopsar nigerrimus, recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
The Jamaican blackbird is a small icterid with all black plumage.
Published measurements include mass about 39.
Range and habitat
Pairs occupy large territories in a variety of wet montane forest types, among them elfin and mist forests, that have substantial epiphytes and mosses on the trees. The Jamaican blackbird's habitats are confined to areas of above 575m and are rarely seen in lowland areas. The species is endemic to Jamaica, where it is restricted to Cockpit Country, some central areas and the Blue and John Crow Mountains.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
The majority of the food taken by this species is found on the trunks of trees and their inner branches, feeding on animal prey, mostly insects, that it finds in bark or in bromeliads. It has shorter legs and longer claws that typical icterids, uses its tail for support when climbing tree trunks, both of that are adaptations to its niche, and has a longer bill and stronger jaw muscles than other New World blackbirds used for probing, spreading and hammering.
It utilises a different niche from the other (semi) endemic icterid, the Jamaican oriole, that forages mainly in the outer branches of the trees.
In crisis
The principal threat to the Jamaican blackbird is habitat loss. There are numerous threats to Jamaican forests, among them bauxite mining, charcoal production, forestry, farming and development. Because of these threats it is listed as Endangered by the IUCN.
Jamaican Blackbird is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Jamaican Blackbird, Wikidata item Q1584943. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
