Spot-crowned Antvireo (Dysithamnus puncticeps) — Vorstman's Guide to the Birds of the Andes and West Coast

Voice

The song is a rapid trill that first rises slightly and then falls, at a pace that is even at first and slightly accelerates at the end. The call is a short, descending chirr.

Listen: SongXC621787

Recording: Rainforest Connection — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto

Identification

11 cm, stocky, with a large head and a fairly heavy, slightly hooked bill. The male has a dark grey crown with many white spots, grey ear coverts and greyish-olive upperparts, with a hidden white patch between the shoulders; the wing coverts are blackish with white tips. The throat, breast and upper belly are white with dark streaks, and the flanks are olive-grey. The female has a rufous crown with dark spots, pale ear coverts and pale, ochraceous underparts with little streaking.

Confusion species

Plain Antvireo Dysithamnus mentalis usually lives higher, has an unspotted crown, a dark mask and no streaks on the breast. Dot-winged Antwren Microrhopias quixensis is slimmer, with a long, white-tipped tail and a thin bill; the male is black.

Habitat

Understorey and mid-storey of humid evergreen lowland and foothill forest, also at forest edges and in older secondary forest, up to about 1000 m in Colombia and 800 m in Ecuador. It picks insects and spiders from leaves and twigs, often in mixed flocks. The nest is a cup suspended in a twig fork, 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: on the Pacific slope and in the Pacific lowlands, and in the lowlands of the lower Cauca valley in the north. Ecuador: in the north-west, south to Manabí and Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas. Absent from Peru, Bolivia and the Galápagos. Outside the guide area on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica and in Panama.

Resident
dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

Density map from the occurrence records of GBIF (2006-10-01 – 2026-09-30), counted per 1.41° grid cell and per month and divided by all bird records in that same cell — so the number of birdwatchers does not shape the picture. Colour depth follows that share and fades out gradually, so the map does not follow national borders. Country outlines: Natural Earth (public domain).

How and when to look

Search mixed flocks in the understorey of lowland forest in the Chocó or in north-western Ecuador, for example in Esmeraldas. Look for a small, slow-moving bird with a white-spotted crown.

Conservation status

Least Concern. Fairly common to uncommon; numbers are thought to be declining through deforestation in the Pacific lowlands.

Scientific name

Dysithamnus puncticeps | Salvin, 1866

Salvin described the species in 1866 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Dysithamnus was introduced in 1847 by Cabanis. The genus name combines Greek duō, 'to plunge', and thamnos, 'bush'. The species name comes from Latin punctum, 'spot', and -ceps, 'headed', for the spotted crown. The specimen the first description was based on came from Veraguas, Panama.