All species › Passerines › Ovenbirds and woodcreepers › Chestnut-crowned Foliage-Gleaner
Chestnut-crowned Foliage-Gleaner | Automolus rufipileatus
Roodkruinbladspeurder | Rascahojas coronicastaño | Barranqueiro-de-coroa-castanha
The Chestnut-crowned Foliage-Gleaner is a foliage-gleaner of the Amazonian lowlands with a chestnut crown and an orange eye. It lives in the dense undergrowth of riverine forest, várzea and bamboo, where it forages in clusters of dead leaves.
Voice
The song is a dry, rattling trill that slows at the end, roughly chrrrrr, mainly at dawn and dusk. The call is a hard, dry chek.
Recording: Tristan Guillebot de Nerville — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
19–20 cm, with a fairly stout, straight bill. The crown is chestnut, the rest of the upperparts olive-brown and the tail rufous. The iris is orange to yellow-orange. The throat is buff, the rest of the underparts ochre-brown, darker on the flanks. There is no distinct eyering or eyebrow. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
Brown-rumped Foliage-Gleaner Automolus melanopezus also has an orange eye, but a dark brown crown and rump that contrast with the rufous tail. Ochre-throated Foliage-Gleaner Automolus ochrolaemus has a dark eye, a buff eyering and a paler throat. Ruddy Foliage-Gleaner Clibanornis rubiginosus is more uniformly dark rufous-brown and lives mainly in the foothills. Cinnamon-rumped Foliage-Gleaner Philydor pyrrhodes has a cinnamon rump and underparts and a dark back.
Habitat
Dense undergrowth of riverine forest, várzea, vegetated river islands and stands of Guadua bamboo in the lowlands, mostly below 1000 m. It searches hanging dead leaves and tangles for insects and spiders, often in mixed flocks. The nest is at the end of a tunnel in an earth bank.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
In Colombia in the lowlands east of the Andes. In Ecuador in the eastern lowlands. In Peru in the Amazonian lowlands. In Bolivia in the lowlands of the north and centre. Absent from the Galápagos. Outside the guide area in southern Venezuela, the Guianas and Brazilian Amazonia.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Search riverbanks and river islands with dense undergrowth, or bamboo, for example along the Napo in Ecuador and the Madre de Dios in Peru. The bird is most active early in the morning and late in the afternoon.
Conservation status
Least Concern. The species has a large range in the Amazon basin.
Scientific name
Automolus rufipileatus | (Pelzeln, 1859)
Pelzeln described the species in 1859 as Anabates rufipileatus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Automolus was introduced in 1853 by Reichenbach. The genus name comes from Ancient Greek automolos, 'deserter'. The species name comes from Latin rufus, 'red', and pileatus, 'capped'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Pará, Brazil.