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Magdalena Tapaculo | Scytalopus rodriguezi
Magdalenatapaculo | Churrín del Alto Magdalena | Macuquinho-do-magdalena
The Magdalena Tapaculo is a dark grey tapaculo found only in a small area of the Colombian Andes. It was described in 2005 from the upper Magdalena valley in Huila; a second form, yariguiorum, was later described from the Serranía de los Yariguíes in Santander. It lives in the understory of cloud forest that is heavily fragmented.
Voice
The song is a rapid series of repeated notes, sometimes trill-like, from dense undergrowth; the form in the Serranía de los Yariguíes sings slightly differently. Also short calls.
Recording: Iván Lau — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
11 cm, round, with a short tail, short wings and fairly long legs. The male is dark slate-grey, slightly paler below, with a brown rump and brown rear flanks barred dark. The female is washed browner. Juveniles are brown with dark bars.
Confusion species
Spillmann's Tapaculo Scytalopus spillmanni usually lives higher and has a different song. Blackish Tapaculo Scytalopus latrans is blackish, without brown, barred flanks. White-crowned Tapaculo Scytalopus atratus lives lower and usually has a white crown spot. In tapaculos the song is the main identification feature.
Habitat
Understory of cloud forest and humid montane forest, especially in dense vegetation at forest edges, in ravines and in old secondary forest, roughly between 1700 and 2300 m. It forages on or just above the ground for small arthropods. Little is known about its breeding.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
Only in Colombia: in the upper Magdalena valley in Huila, on the slopes at the southern head of the Central and Eastern Andes, and as the form yariguiorum in the Serranía de los Yariguíes in Santander, in the Eastern Andes. Absent from Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and the Galápagos. Does not occur outside the guide area.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In Huila, listen in the morning in the forest reserves of the upper Magdalena valley, or in Serranía de los Yariguíes National Park, for the rapid series of notes from the undergrowth.
Conservation status
Endangered. The range is small and the forest of the upper Magdalena valley has largely been cleared for farming, cattle and coffee. The remaining population lives in fragmented forest remnants; part of it lies in protected areas.
Scientific name
Scytalopus rodriguezi | Krabbe, Salaman, Cortés D, Quevedo, Ortega & Cadena, 2005
Krabbe, Salaman, Cortés D, Quevedo, Ortega & Cadena described the species in 2005 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Scytalopus was introduced in 1837 by Gould. The genus name combines Greek skutalē or skutalon, 'stick', with pous, 'foot'. The species name rodriguezi honours José Vicente Rodríguez Mahecha, a Colombian conservationist. The specimen the first description was based on came from Finca Merenberg, San Agustín, Huila, Colombia.