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Imeri Warbling Antbird | Hypocnemis flavescens
Imeriorpheusmierkruiper | Hormiguero amarillento | Cantador-sulfúreo
The Imeri Warbling Antbird is the northernmost of the warbling antbirds in the guide area, with yellowish-tinged underparts. Until 2007 it was treated as a subspecies of a single widespread species, but differences in song led to a split into six species. Pairs live in dense tangles in the understorey and often sing in duet.
Voice
The male sings a series of six to ten clear whistles that gradually become lower and hoarser; the female often answers with a shorter series, producing a duet. The call is a rasping cher-cher.
Recording: JAYRSON ARAUJO DE OLIVEIRA — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
11–12 cm, small and compact, with a fairly short tail. The crown is black with white streaks, with a white supercilium and a black eyestripe. The mantle is streaked black and white, the rest of the upperparts olive-brown with a rufous rump. The wings are black with two white wingbars. The throat and breast are pale yellowish with black streaks on the sides of the breast; the belly and flanks are ochre-yellow to rufous. The female has ochre rather than white spots on the crown and is slightly duller.
Confusion species
Peruvian Warbling Antbird Hypocnemis peruviana lives to the south and west of this species, has whiter underparts and a song with a different structure. Guianan Warbling Antbird Hypocnemis cantator lives further east, outside the guide area, and has a whiter throat and breast. Yellow-browed Antbird Hypocnemis hypoxantha is brighter yellow below, with a yellow supercilium, and forages higher in the forest.
Habitat
Dense understorey, vine tangles and growth around treefalls in terra firme lowland forest, also at forest edges, in secondary forest and in white-sand forest, below about 500 m. It searches for insects and spiders among leaves and thin twigs, usually up to a few metres above the ground, sometimes in mixed flocks. The nest is an open cup low in the vegetation.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
Colombia: in the east, in the lowlands east of the Andes from Vichada and Meta south to Guainía and Vaupés. Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia: absent. Absent from the Galápagos. Outside the guide area in southern Venezuela and in north-western Brazil, along the upper Rio Negro.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Listen in the early morning at forest edges and in light gaps in the forest around Inírida and Mitú for the duet. The birds usually stay in dense vegetation, but respond to each other's song and then come to the edge of the thicket.
Conservation status
Least Concern. The species has a large range in little-disturbed forest and tolerates edges and secondary growth.
Scientific name
Hypocnemis flavescens | Sclater, 1865
Sclater described the species in 1865 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Hypocnemis was introduced in 1847 by Cabanis. The genus name combines Greek hupo, 'somewhat like', and knēmis, 'leggings'. The species name comes from Latin flavescens, 'yellowish'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Marabitanas, Rio Negro, Brazil.