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White-chinned Thistletail | Asthenes fuliginosa
Witkindistelstaart | Colicardo barbiblanco | Cauda-de-cardo-de-queixo-branco
The White-chinned Thistletail is the most widespread thistletail of the northern Andes, from Colombia to central Peru. It lives at the treeline and in shrubby páramo and creeps through dense vegetation. The long, forked tail with ragged tips and the white chin are the best features.
Voice
The song is a weak, high trill that speeds up and rises, or a descending series that turns into a trill; also a rising series of tripled notes, like tididit. Calls a sharp pyeek or kick and a chink.
Recording: Pritam Baruah — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
18–20 cm, with a short, pointed bill and a long, deeply forked tail whose tips look ragged because of the loose barbs. Crown, back, rump and tail are dark rufous-brown, the wings brighter rufous. A faint greyish-buff supercilium and a whitish eye-ring in a blackish to dark brown face. The chin is whitish, the underparts grey with brown flanks. The subspecies peruviana has a darker chin and hardly any eye-ring; plengei is redder and has a longer, whiter supercilium. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
Mouse-colored Thistletail Asthenes griseomurina, in southern Ecuador and northern Peru, is duller olive-brown, with a grey face and no obvious white chin. Perija Thistletail Asthenes perijana lives only in the Perijá and has a cinnamon-buff chin patch. White-browed Spinetail Hellmayrea gularis is smaller, with a short tail and a clear white supercilium. Many-striped Canastero Asthenes flammulata is heavily streaked and lives in open páramo.
Habitat
Shrubby páramo, elfin forest, the upper edge of cloud forest and dense undergrowth at the treeline, locally Polylepis woodland, mostly between 2800 and 4000 m, in Colombia from 2400 m. It searches for insects low in dense vegetation. Little is known about the nest.
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 Eastern Andes (nominate) and in the Central Andes from Caldas to Nariño (fumigata). Ecuador: in the Andes south to Pichincha on the western slope and Morona-Santiago on the eastern slope. Peru: in Amazonas (peruviana) and from San Martín to Pasco (plengei). Absent from Bolivia and the Galápagos. Outside the guide area in Táchira in Venezuela.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In Ecuador search shrubby páramo around the Papallacta pass and at Guango, in Colombia the treeline in the Central and Eastern Andes; the bird sometimes sings briefly from the top of a shrub and then drops back into cover.
Conservation status
Least Concern. Fires in the páramo and grazing at the treeline locally degrade the habitat.
Scientific name
Asthenes fuliginosa | (de Lafresnaye, 1843) (GBIF: Schizoeaca fuliginosa)
De Lafresnaye described the species in 1843 as Synnalaxis fuliginosus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Asthenes was introduced in 1853 by Reichenbach. The genus name comes from Ancient Greek asthenēs, 'insignificant', 'weak'. The species name comes from Latin fuliginosus, 'sooty', for the dark plumage. The specimen the first description was based on came from Bogotá, Colombia.