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Taczanowski's Ground Tyrant | Muscisaxicola griseus
Taczanowski's grondtiran | Dormilona de Taczanowski | Dormilona-de-taczanowski
Taczanowski's Ground Tyrant is a medium-sized, plain greyish-brown ground tyrant of puna and jalca grassland in Peru and western Bolivia. It lacks a coloured crown or nape patch and was formerly treated as a subspecies of Paramo Ground Tyrant. The name honours the Polish zoologist Władysław Taczanowski.
Voice
Usually silent. Gives a soft, short tsit or peek, mainly when flushed.
No recording with a suitable Creative Commons licence is available for this species yet.
Identification
18 cm, upright, with long legs and a fairly short, thin bill. The upperparts are plain greyish brown; the crown is barely browner than the back and lacks any coloured patch. A short white stripe runs from the bill to above the eye. The underparts are pale grey with a faint sandy wash on the flanks and belly. The tail is black with narrow white outer edges. The sexes are alike; juveniles have pale fringes to the wing coverts.
Confusion species
Cinereous Ground Tyrant Muscisaxicola cinereus is smaller and purer grey, with a narrower white loral stripe. Puna Ground Tyrant Muscisaxicola juninensis has a diffuse cinnamon-brown patch on the hindcrown. Rufous-naped Ground Tyrant Muscisaxicola rufivertex has a sharply defined rufous nape patch. Paramo Ground Tyrant Muscisaxicola alpinus is very similar but lives farther north, in the páramo of Ecuador and Colombia.
Habitat
Short grassland, rocky slopes, bog edges and grazed land in the puna and jalca, mostly between 3500 and 4800 m. It runs quickly over the ground, then stops upright and picks up insects or makes short sallies after them. The nest is in a cavity among stones or in an earth bank.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
Peru: in the Andes from Cajamarca and La Libertad south to Cusco and Puno. Bolivia: in the west, in La Paz department. Absent from Colombia, Ecuador and the Galápagos. The species does not occur outside the guide area.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Search short-grazed grassland and the edges of tracks above 3500 m, for example at Abra Málaga in Cusco, for greyish-brown birds that run and stop.
Conservation status
Least Concern. The species lives in grazed grassland, which covers large areas.
Scientific name
Muscisaxicola griseus | Taczanowski, 1884
Taczanowski described the species in 1884 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Muscisaxicola was introduced in 1837 by D'Orbigny, ACVMD & de Lafresnaye. The genus name is a blend of the genera Muscicapa (flycatchers) and Saxicola (stonechats and whinchats). The species name comes from Medieval Latin griseus, 'grey'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Maraynioc, Junín, Peru.