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Guianan Gnatcatcher | Polioptila guianensis
Guyanamuggenvanger | Perlita guayanesa | Balança-rabo-da-guiana
Guianan Gnatcatcher is a small, grey gnatcatcher with a long, black-and-white tail that lives high in the canopy of Amazonian forest. It moves restlessly among the outer leaves and is therefore often seen only briefly from below. In the guide area it reaches only the far east of Colombia.
Voice
The song is a simple series of high, thin notes, tsee-tsee-tsee-tsee, on one pitch or slightly descending. The call is a soft, nasal, mewing note.
Recording: GABRIEL LEITE — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
10–11 cm, with a thin, straight bill and a long tail. The male is blue-grey on the head, back and breast, with a broken white eye-ring; the throat and belly are white. The central tail feathers are black, the outer ones white, so that from below the tail looks mostly white. The female is paler grey, with a white supercilium. Juveniles resemble the female but are tinged browner.
Confusion species
Tropical Gnatcatcher Polioptila plumbea male has a black crown and a white face and white underparts without a grey breast; the female has a grey crown and a white face. It usually lives lower, at forest edges and in semi-open country. Gnatwrens (Microbates, Ramphocaenus) are brown and live in the undergrowth.
Habitat
Canopy and edges of humid terra firme forest in the lowlands, locally also lower forest on white sand. It searches the outer foliage high in the trees for small insects, usually in pairs and often with mixed canopy flocks. The nest is a small, lichen-covered cup on a branch high in a tree.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
In Colombia only in the far east, in the lowlands of Guainía and Vaupés. In Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia not or scarcely recorded. Absent from the Galápagos. Outside the guide area in southern Venezuela, the Guianas and Amazonian Brazil.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Scan the canopy from forest edges, clearings or canopy towers in eastern Colombia and watch for mixed flocks. The high, thin song is often the first sign; the white tail sides show when the bird spreads its tail.
Conservation status
Not evaluated in this circumscription. In the guide area the species is known from a small area of remote lowland forest, where the forest is largely intact.
Scientific name
Polioptila guianensis | Todd, 1920
Todd described the species in 1920 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Polioptila was introduced in 1855 by Sclater. The genus name comes from Greek polios, 'grey', and ptilon, 'feather'. The species name refers to the Guianas (New Latin guianensis, 'of Guiana'). The specimen the first description was based on came from Tamanoir, Mana River, French Guiana.