Chestnut-headed Chachalaca (Ortalis ruficeps)
About the Chestnut-headed Chachalaca
The chestnut-headed chachalaca (Ortalis ruficeps) is a bird in the family Cracidae, the chachalacas, guans, and curassows. It is endemic to Brazil. What is now the chestnut-headed chachalaca was previously a subspecies of what was then called variable chachalaca (Ortalis motmot). (Confusingly, after the split the International Ornithological Committee (IOC) renamed O. motmot "little chachalaca" but the American Ornithological Society (AOS) and the Clements taxonomy retained the name "variable" for it.) It is monotypic. The chestnut-headed chachalaca is 43 to 54 cm (1.4 to 1.8 ft) long and weighs 345 to 620 g (0.76 to 1.4 lb). It has a reddish-chestnut head, grayish brown upperparts, grayish underparts, and dark brown primary flight feathers.
No audio on this page yet
We only publish recordings we may use commercially, because this site is supported by ads. xeno-canto lists 4 recordings for this species: 2 CC BY-NC-SA · 2 CC BY-NC-ND. None of them permits commercial use, so there is no player here — the page is kept as a profile so the bird is not missing from the guide.
As soon as someone uploads a freely licensed recording, we mirror it and the player appears here.
Listed as recorded in Brazil in the xeno-canto catalogue.
Related species you can hear
- Colombian ChachalacaOrtalis columbianarecording
- Grey-headed ChachalacaOrtalis cinereicepsrecording
- Rufous-headed ChachalacaOrtalis erythropterarecording
- Speckled ChachalacaOrtalis guttatarecording
This species has no recording here yet — these relatives do, so you can hear what the family sounds like.