Dulus dominicus
Silhouette: Sheatherius · PhyloPic
The palmchat (Dulus dominicus) is a medium-sized passerine bird endemic to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola (split between the Dominican Republic and Haiti). It is the only species in the genus Dulus and the family Dulidae, and is related to the waxwing family Bombycillidae and the silky-flycatchers in Ptiliogonatidae. Its name reflects its strong association with palms for feeding, roosting, and nesting.
In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the palmchat in his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected from the French colony of Saint-Domingue, modern Haiti. He used the French name Le tangara de S. Dominigue and the Latin Tangara Dominicensis. Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. When the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition in 1766, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson, with one of them being the palmchat. Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name Tanagra dominica and cited Brisson's work.
While Linnaeus... Wikipedia →
Alarm call0:55
Dominican Republic · 2014
© Oscar Humberto Marin-Gomez · XC214543 · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
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Dominican Republic · 2012
© Leonardo Ordóñez-Delgado · XC103841 · CC BY-NC-ND 2.5
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Dominican Republic · 2022
Kent P. McFarland · iNaturalist · CC0
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Los Haitises National Park | 🇩🇴 Dominican Republic | |
| 2 | Jaragua National Park | 🇩🇴 Dominican Republic |
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Santo Domingo | 🇩🇴 Dominican Republic |
Very likely
About 90% of wildlife watchers report a Palmchat sighting in Santo Domingo on a given day, based on 1,346 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data. It is the most-seen of the 110 birds we can rate there.
May, July and November
In those months over 90% of wildlife watchers report a Palmchat in Santo Domingo on a given day, against about 80% in September, the lowest month.
Between 4 and 7 pm
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Palmchat sightings with a recorded time, and about 8 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
Only Santo Domingo, in our data
Santo Domingo is the only city on Wallace's Line with enough records to rate Palmchat sightings: about 90% of wildlife watchers there report one on a given day.
Same order: Passeriformes
The closest relatives of the Palmchat that you can see in Santo Domingo (order Passeriformes, Perching Birds) are Bananaquit (about 90%), Northern Mockingbird (about 80%) and Gray Kingbird (about 80%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Palmchat is recorded against all the birds logged in Santo Domingo (1,346 verified sightings), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
