[3][4] Linnaeus cited his own catalogue of the cabinet of curiosities belonging to the king of Sweden, Adolf Frederick, as well as the description and illustration of the "Greater Bull-Finch" by the English naturalist George Edwards's that had been published in 1747.

[5][6] Neither Edwards nor Linnaeus knew the origin of their specimens but in 1902 the German ornithologists Hans von Berlepsch and Ernst Hartert designated type locality as Suriname.

The red-breasted meadowlark is resident from south-western Costa Rica, which it has recently colonised, and Trinidad, south to north-eastern Peru and central Brazil.

[9] Like other meadowlarks, it is a bird associated with open country, including moist grasslands, pasture and cultivation, preferably with the odd bush or fence post for males to use as a songpost.

In display the male flies up to 10 m (33 ft) in the air, then parachutes down on folded wings whilst singing a wheezing song, ti-ti-pee-pee-KWAAAAAA.