All species › Passerines › Thrushes and allies › Yellow-throated Nightingale-Thrush
Yellow-throated Nightingale-Thrush | Catharus dryas
Goulds dwerglijster | Zorzal pecho amarillo | Sabiá-de-garganta-amarela
The Yellow-throated Nightingale-Thrush is a nightingale-thrush with a black head, an orange bill and eye-ring and yellowish-orange, dark-spotted underparts. It lives hidden on and just above the floor of humid montane forest, often in ravines and along streams. The birds in South America, which this account covers, are now usually treated as a separate species, Speckled Nightingale-Thrush Catharus maculatus; Catharus dryas in the strict sense lives in Central America.
Voice
The song is a series of short, clear, fluty phrases with brief pauses between them, very similar to that of Slaty-backed Nightingale-Thrush. The call is a soft, rising, mewing rhee?.
Recording: Bill Pyle — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
17–19 cm, round in shape, with a fairly short tail. The male has a mostly black head, an orange eye-ring and dark olive-grey upperparts. The underparts are apricot-yellow to yellowish orange, densely marked with dark spots on the breast and flanks. The bill and legs are orange, the iris dark. In the female the hindcrown and head are dark grey rather than black. Birds in southern Bolivia have a buffy throat.
Confusion species
Slaty-backed Nightingale-Thrush Catharus fuscater also has a dark head and an orange bill, but is slate-grey above, has grey to whitish underparts without spots and a pale iris. Orange-billed Nightingale-Thrush Catharus aurantiirostris, in the guide area only in Colombia, lacks the black head and has unspotted grey underparts. Swainson's Thrush Catharus ustulatus, a winter visitor, has a dark bill and a pale, spotted breast without yellow.
Habitat
Undergrowth of humid foothill and lower montane forest, especially in damp ravines and along forest streams, at about 600 to 2200 m, lower in western Ecuador and north-western Peru. It forages on the ground and low in the vegetation for insects and other invertebrates and sometimes follows army ant swarms.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
In Colombia on the eastern slope of the Eastern Andes and locally in the Central Andes. In Ecuador on both slopes of the Andes. In Peru on the eastern slope of the Andes and locally in the far north-west, in Tumbes. In Bolivia in the Andes of the west and south. Absent from the Galápagos. Outside the guide area in the Andes of Venezuela and in north-western Argentina.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Listen in the early morning in ravines and along streams in humid eastern-slope forest. The bird often sings from a low branch in the shade and then moves over the ground in short hops.
Conservation status
Not Evaluated under this name. The South American birds, assessed as a separate species, are rated Least Concern: the range is large and the population is considered stable. In Colombia the species is fairly common, in Peru uncommon.
Scientific name
Catharus dryas | (Gould, 1855)
Gould described the species in 1855 as Malacocichla dryas; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Catharus was introduced in 1850 by Bonaparte. The genus name comes from Greek katharos, 'pure, clean', referring to the plumage of the Orange-billed Nightingale-Thrush (C. aurantiirostris). The species name comes from Greek druas, 'dryad', a tree nymph in Greek mythology, fitting a forest bird. The specimen the first description was based on came from Guatemala.