Yellow-bellied Seedeater

How to find it

Scan open grassy places such as abandoned pasture, roadsides and corn fields, and give corn fields with tasseling corn a careful look. Outside the breeding season the birds travel in flocks of 20 or more, so check any seedeater flock closely. As the dry season goes on, try damper areas. Wet fields in the deep south have given a visiting group a scoped bird, and a scope suits something this small. In the breeding season, look for males singing from the tops of shrubs and trees.

How to recognise it

The adult male is the easy one. Look for:

- a black face, throat and chest, a hood that stands out against olive-brown upperparts

- pale yellow to nearly white underparts, so the belly can look almost white

- dusky streaks on the flanks

- a silvery grey bill, described elsewhere as pale blue-grey

- a very small frame, about 9.5 cm long and about 9 g

The female is plainer: light brown above and yellowish below, with a dark bill. Young birds look much like females. Because the male pattern is unmistakable in Costa Rica, a clean male is the bird to hope for, and the hood is the feature to find first.

What it sounds like

Recording: GERMAN LEONEL SARMIENTO CRUZ, CC BY 4.0, source, read 4 Nov 2026.

Behaviour and diet

It eats grass seeds. At La Esperanza reserve, elsewhere in its range, these small birds are often seen alone or in small groups, clinging to grass seed heads and crushing the seeds with their thick bills.

Outside breeding it forms flocks of 20 or more, sometimes mixed with other seedeaters. The flocks seem to wander nomadically, especially in the dry season. In Costa Rica it moves toward damper areas as the dry season goes on, so a field that was empty earlier may hold birds later.

Where it lives

In Costa Rica it uses open grassy places: abandoned pasture, young regrowth, roadsides and sometimes shrubs in house gardens. It is often found in corn fields when the corn is tasseling.

The nominate form occurs in patches in the central highlands. It also occurs on the Pacific slope in southern San José and Puntarenas provinces. Across its whole range it lives in grassland, shrubby clearings and farmland, and it is absent from much of the central Amazon Basin.

When to see it

Singing males and recently fledged young have been seen between August and October. Birds from the Caribbean breeding population are thought to move south to Costa Rica outside the breeding season.

Similar birds

Females and young look like Variable Seedeater (Sporophila aurita) but are paler and more yellowish below. Up close, the bill is clearly smaller. Even so, females are hard to separate from female Variable Seedeater, and guides say many cannot be safely separated, so enjoy the males.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

Costa Ricans know it as Espiguero Vientriamarillo, and the AOCR list also gives Setillero Panameño. Setillero is also given as a common name. Elsewhere in Latin America it is called espiguero capuchino in Colombia, and corbatica or golilluo in other places.

Status and conservation

The AOCR list marks it as a resident (R), uncommon in Costa Rica, a permanent or seasonal resident that is nomadic mainly in the dry season.