Distribution

The general distribution of the Yellow-faced Grassquit ranges from Mexico south to northern South America, and in the Caribbean.

The Yellow-faced Grassquit is restricted to the Gulf/Caribbean slope from northern Mexico (Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas) south to Guatemala (Binford 1989, Howell and Webb 1995). On the Caribbean slope, it continues south to Panama. It occurs on the Pacific slope in El Salvador, Honduras, very locally in Nicaragua (Martínez-Sánchez and Will 2010), in Costa Rica (except for the northwest; Stiles and Skutch 1989), and in Panama.  Widespread in Colombia, the Yellow-faced Grassquit occurs on the Pacific coast, in the Cauca and Magdalena valleys, and east of the Andes in western Caquetá (Hilty and Brown 1986); does not occur in the Caribbean lowlands or in the Santa Marta region. Also found in northwestern Ecuador (Ridgely and Greenfield 2001) and in extreme western Venezuela in Táchira and Mérida (Hilty 2003). In the Caribbean, occurs throughout the Greater Antilles and on the Cayman Islands (American Ornithologists' Union 1998).

Resident; but has occurred as a vagrant in south Texas and in Florida (American Ornithologists' Union 1998).

The Yellow-faced Grassquit has been recorded as an introduced species to the Hawaiian Islands, on Oahu (A.O.U. 1998). Otherwise, endemic to the Americas.

The Yellow-faced Grassquit inhabits in humid to semi-arid open habitats, such as second growth, forest edges, weedy fields, hedgerows, in pastures and along borders of fields, roadsides, and thickets, favoring gardens and neglected, overgrown lawns (Binford 1989, Stiles and Skutch 1989, Howell and Webb 1995).

The Yellow-faced Grassquit recently has been expanding its range. It first was recorded in Meta department in Colombia in 1997 (Salaman 2002).  It first was reported from Ecuador in 1976, with a record of a single bird in Amazonian Ecuador (Tallman and Tallman 1977). There is only a single subsequent record for eastern Ecuador, but in the early 1980s it was reported from the west slope of the Andes in northwestern Ecuador, and now is fairly common in this region (Ridgely and Greenfield 2001).

No information.