Seiurus aurocapilla
The ovenbird is a small songbird of the New World warbler family Parulidae. It is the only species placed in the genus Seiurus. This migratory bird breeds in eastern North America and winters in Central America, many Caribbean islands, Florida and northern Venezuela.

Rhododendrites · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Also called
- ovenbirdPBDB
- Sits inside
- SeiurusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
Time the record covers
At most 129 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Seiurus aurocapilla on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
2 occurrences- Pleistocene91%
- Holocene9%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Seiurus aurocapilla and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Seiurus aurocapilla and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
69 taxa- Columbina passerina2 sites
- Parulidae2 sites
- Porzana carolina2 sites
- Setophaga2 sites
- Tiaris bicolor2 sites
- Tyrannus dominicensis2 sites
- Anolis1 site
- Anolis sagrei1 site
- Anous stolidus1 site
- Anthracothorax dominicus1 site
- Arenaria interpres1 site
- Asio1 site
- Butorides virescens1 site
- Calyptophilus frugivorus1 site
- Cathartes aura1 site
- Coccyzus longirostris1 site
- Coccyzus minor1 site
- Coccyzus rufigularis1 site
- Coereba flaveola1 site
- Contopus1 site
- Cyclura1 site
- Dulus dominicus1 site
- Dumetella carolinensis1 site
- Emydidae1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Seiurus aurocapilla, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
2 references- Studies on Fossil and Extant Vertebrates from San Salvador (Watling's) Island, Bahamas1
- Fossil birds from the Dominican Republic1
Each of the 2 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Seiurus aurocapilla
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Rhododendrites
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Credit
- Bruce Museum
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Seiurus aurocapilla · BRUCE:2025.12.400:BRUCE2025_12_400
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Ovenbird”
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itSeiurus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1766)