All species › Passerines › Ovenbirds and woodcreepers › Slaty-winged Foliage-Gleaner
Slaty-winged Foliage-Gleaner | Neophilydor fuscipenne
Leivleugelbladspeurder | Limpiafronda alioscura | Limpa-folha-de-asa-escura
The Slaty-winged Foliage-Gleaner is a warm rufous foliage-gleaner with dark, slaty wings of humid lowland and foothill forest west of the Andes. It searches dead leaves and epiphytes in the middle levels of the forest and almost always travels with mixed flocks. It is the western counterpart of Cinnamon-rumped Foliage-Gleaner.
No photograph of a living wild bird of this species with a suitable Creative Commons licence exists. Do you have one that meets the rules? Send it in.
Voice
The song is a fast, dry trill or rattle. The call is a short, sharp chik.
No recording with a suitable Creative Commons licence is available for this species yet.
Identification
16–17 cm, with a straight, fairly slender bill. The crown and nape are dark olive-brown; the mantle, rump and tail are warm rufous. A buff supercilium. The wings are dark slaty grey and contrast clearly with the back. The throat and underparts are plain ochre to pale buff. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
Buff-fronted Foliage-Gleaner Dendroma rufa is larger, with a buff forehead and rufous wings, and lives higher in the mountains. Scaly-throated Foliage-Gleaner Anabacerthia variegaticeps has a buff eye-ring and scaly throat and also lives higher. Ruddy Foliage-Gleaner Clibanornis rubiginosus is darker rufous, without contrast in the wings, and keeps to the undergrowth.
Habitat
Humid lowland and foothill forest in the Chocó and western Ecuador, also older secondary forest and forest edges, mostly up to about 1000 m. It forages in the middle and upper levels, almost always in mixed flocks, in clusters of dead leaves, moss and epiphytes for insects. It nests in a cavity in a bank.
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 Pacific lowlands and foothills and in the north of the country. Ecuador: in the western lowlands and foothills in the north and centre. Absent from Peru, Bolivia, the Galápagos and east of the Andes. Outside the guide area in Panama.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Follow mixed flocks in humid forest in the foothills of north-western Ecuador or the Pacific lowlands of Colombia and watch for a rufous bird with dark wings probing dead leaves.
Conservation status
Least Concern. Lowland forest west of the Andes has largely been cleared, so the species has disappeared locally; in the large forest tracts of the Chocó it is still common.
Scientific name
Neophilydor fuscipenne | (Salvin, 1866)
Salvin described the species in 1866 as Philydor fuscipennis; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Neophilydor was introduced in 2023 by Sangster, Harvey, Gaudin & Claramunt. The genus name combines Greek neos, 'new', with Philydor, the genus in which both species were formerly placed; Sangster and colleagues named it in 2023. The species name fuscipenne comes from Latin fuscus, 'dusky', and penna, 'feather, wing': 'dusky-winged'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Santiago de Veraguas, Panama.