Family Icteridae
Yellow-billed Cacique
Amblycercus holosericeus
In Spanish: Cacique Picoplata (Pico de Plata)
- Resident
Black bird with a pale bill and yellow eyes, hiding in thickets and bamboo.
The Yellow-billed Cacique is a secretive black bird, and in Costa Rica no other all-black bird combines a yellow bill with yellow eyes. Costa Ricans also call it Pico de Plata, silver bill.
It is listed as a resident and described as fairly common, from the Caribbean lowlands up into the high mountains. On a trip we build, it is a bird of pasture and edge habitats on the Caribbean slope around the Río Sarapiquí and La Selva region.
How to find it
Look and listen in tangled undergrowth, and watch for it climbing to high branches to feed. A Costa Rica tour report calls it shy and retiring and says it loves dense stands of heliconia and ginger. The same group had a very responsive bird at a roadside stop one afternoon in the Caribbean lowlands. Its bright bill stands out in shady undergrowth, which can help you spot it.
How to recognise it
Both sexes are fully black with a pale yellowish bill and bright yellow eyes. No other all-black bird in Costa Rica has both a yellow bill and yellow eyes. The bill is long and cone-shaped, with a flat, chisel-like tip. The body looks sturdy, with a fairly broad, rounded tail. Males have a glossier shine than females. Length is roughly 22 to 25 cm across its range. Its long tail is often frayed at the tip, probably from sneaking through dense growth.
What it sounds like
Behaviour and diet
It is a solitary, sedentary bird that stays hidden in thickets and brush, leaving cover mainly to feed on high tree branches. It forages actively in tangles of hanging dead leaves and pecks at twigs, branches and bamboo to get at insects inside. Nests are sturdy cups built low, 1 to 3 m up, in thick scrub or sugarcane. The Bronzed Cowbird parasitizes the nests.
Where it lives
Across its range it lives in moist lowland forest, moist montane forest and heavily degraded former forest. In Costa Rica it favors low, impenetrable scrub in young secondary growth, cane fields, stream edges and forest edges. At higher elevations it is found in understory and hollows crowded with bamboo. It reaches about 3,100 m in Costa Rica and Panama. It occurs on the Caribbean side, the Nicoya Peninsula, the central mountains and the Pacific slope from the Gulf of Nicoya south.
When to see it
Breeding in Costa Rica is given as January to June by one source, February to June by another and April to June by a third, so the exact months differ.
Similar birds
Among black birds in Costa Rica, the yellow bill together with yellow eyes separates it from all others. Scarlet-rumped Cacique and Bronzed Cowbird are named alongside it on some tour itineraries.
Names and lore in Costa Rica
The AOCR Spanish name is Cacique Picoplata. Costa Ricans also use the everyday name Pico de Plata, meaning silver bill.
Status and conservation
It is a resident on the AOCR list (R), described as fairly common in Costa Rica, and the IUCN rates it Least Concern with stable populations.
Photography tips
The bright bill stands out in shady undergrowth. It is most often a skulker in dense cover, so expect brief views.
How we know this 15 sources, each read on the date shown
- Flickr (Spanish natural history text, Costa Rica) read 2026-11-04
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jobando/35612409536 - Animal Diversity Web read 2026-11-04
https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Amblycercus_holosericeus/ - Birds of the World (Cornell) read 2026-11-04
https://birdsoftheworld.org/bow/species/yebcac1/cur/introduction - iNaturalist (Wikipedia summary) read 2026-11-04
https://www.inaturalist.org/guide_taxa/459945 - Cloudbridge Nature Reserve bird list read 2026-11-04
https://www.cloudbridge.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Bird-Species-List-Costa-Rica-13-April-2020.pdf - UNDP Costa Rica read 2026-11-04
https://www.undp.org/es/costa-rica/noticias/conteo-de-aves-navideno-permitio-registro-de-4-nuevas-especies-en-el-cbima - Wikipedia read 2026-11-04
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amblycercus_holosericeus - Encyclopedia of Life read 2026-11-04
https://eol.org/pages/45511896/articles?locale_code=en&resource_id=560 - Field Guides Birding Tours, Costa Rica 2017 trip list read 2026-11-04
https://fieldguides.com/triplists/cos17.html - Field Guides, Classic Costa Rica itinerary read 2026-11-04
https://fieldguides.com/itineraries/cos26-ITIN.pdf - Field Guides Birding Tours, Costa Rica 2024 trip list read 2026-11-04
https://fieldguides.com/triplists/cos24.html - Birdquest, Ultimate Costa Rica read 2026-11-04
https://www.birdquest-tours.com/birding-tours/costa-rica-ultimate/ - Exotic Birding, Cerro de la Muerte checklist read 2026-11-04
http://www.exoticbirding.com/costarica/cerro-de-la-muerte/checklist.html - Oiseaux.net read 2026-11-04
https://www.oiseaux.net/en/oiseaux/yellow-billed.cacique.html - Wikipedia read 2026-11-04
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow-billed_cacique