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Tamarugo Conebill | Conirostrum tamarugense
Roodsterspitssnavel | Picocono de tamarugal | Figuinha-do-tamarugo
The Tamarugo Conebill is a small grey conebill with a rufous throat and eyebrow. It breeds in plantations of tamarugo trees (Prosopis tamarugo) in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, to which it owes its name, and moves into the Andes outside the breeding season, as far as southern Peru. It is one of the few migratory conebills.
Voice
High, thin tsip calls. The song is a short, high, rather scratchy series of twittering notes, heard less often in the wintering area.
Recording: Étienne Leroy — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
12 cm, with a fine, pointed bill. The upperparts are grey, the crown slightly darker. A broad eyebrow and the throat are rufous to orange-brown, the undertail coverts rufous and the rest of the underparts pale grey. The wings are dark, with a white patch at the base of the primaries that shows as a white band in flight. The sexes are roughly alike. Juveniles are duller and browner, with little or no rufous.
Confusion species
Cinereous Conebill Conirostrum cinereum, which occurs in the same areas, has a white eyebrow, no rufous throat and buff to grey underparts. White-browed Conebill Conirostrum ferrugineiventre is dark slate-grey, with a white eyebrow and a rufous belly, and lives in humid montane forest on the eastern slope.
Habitat
In the guide area mainly in Polylepis groves, shrubby slopes, hedgerows and gardens around villages and scrub in dry valleys, roughly between 2500 and 4000 m. It forages for insects in the foliage in pairs or small groups, sometimes together with Cinereous Conebills. The breeding area in Chile lies in tamarugo plantations on the desert plain.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
In Peru on the western slope of the Andes in the south, mainly in Tacna, Moquegua and Arequipa, with fewer records further north. In Bolivia at most exceptional; no confirmed records are known. Absent from Colombia, Ecuador and the Galápagos. Outside the guide area it breeds in the Pampa del Tamarugal in northern Chile and winters in the Andes of northern Chile.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In the austral winter, search Polylepis groves and scrub above the villages on the western slope in Tacna and Moquegua. In groups of Cinereous Conebills, look for a bird with a rufous throat.
Conservation status
Least Concern. The range is small and the breeding birds depend on tamarugo woodland, which is threatened by groundwater extraction in the Atacama; the Polylepis wintering areas are under pressure from cutting.
Scientific name
Conirostrum tamarugense | Johnson & Millie, 1972
Johnson & Millie described the species in 1972 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Conirostrum was introduced in 1838 by D'Orbigny, ACVMD & de Lafresnaye. The genus name combines Latin conus, 'cone', and rostrum, 'bill'. The species name refers to the tamarugo (Prosopis tamarugo), the shrub with which the species is closely associated. The specimen the first description was based on came from Northern Chile.