All species › Passerines › Ovenbirds and woodcreepers › Light-crowned Spinetail
Light-crowned Spinetail | Cranioleuca albiceps
Witkruinstekelstaart | Curutié coronado | Arredio-de-coroa-clara
The Light-crowned Spinetail is a spinetail of high Yungas cloud forest in south-eastern Peru and western Bolivia. The pale crown contrasts with the rufous upperparts. The crown colour varies from white in the north to buff in Cochabamba, with intermediates in between.
Voice
The song is a high, thin, accelerating and descending series of notes. Calls with short, high notes.
Recording: Jacob Wijpkema — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
15–16 cm, with a straight, pointed bill and a graduated tail with spiny feather tips. The crown is white to creamy, bordered dark at the sides; buff in the Cochabamba form. The back, wings and tail are rufous. The face is greyish, the throat pale, the rest of the underparts greyish olive-brown. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
Marcapata Spinetail Cranioleuca marcapatae in Cusco has a rufous crown. Vilcabamba Spinetail Cranioleuca weskei also has a white crown, but lives far to the north-west. Ash-browed Spinetail Cranioleuca curtata lives lower, with an olive-brown crown and back and a grey supercilium.
Habitat
Humid montane forest and cloud forest, often with Chusquea bamboo, roughly between 2500 and 3500 m. It forages in pairs or small groups, often with mixed flocks, for arthropods in moss, epiphytes and bark while hitching along branches. Relatives build a hanging, globular nest of moss; little is known about the nest of this species.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
Colombia: absent. Ecuador: absent. Peru: in the south-east, on the eastern slope of the Andes in Puno. Bolivia: on the eastern slope of the Andes in La Paz and Cochabamba. Absent from the Galápagos. Does not occur outside the guide area.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Search the upper Yungas, for example along the old road from La Paz to Coroico or along the road from Cochabamba to the Chapare, in bamboo and mossy forest. Follow mixed flocks in the mid-storey.
Conservation status
Least Concern. The species has a limited range, but much of the montane forest is still intact.
Scientific name
Cranioleuca albiceps | (d'Orbigny, ACVMD & de Lafresnaye, 1837)
D'Orbigny, ACVMD & de Lafresnaye described the species in 1837 as Synallaxis albiceps; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Cranioleuca was introduced in 1853 by Reichenbach. The genus name comes from Greek kranion, 'skull', and leukos, 'white'. The species name comes from Latin albus, 'white', and -ceps, '-headed'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Sica Sica, La Paz, Bolivia.