All species › Passerines › New World warblers › Yungas Warbler
Yungas Warbler | Basileuterus punctipectus
Yungaszanger | Reinita de las Yungas | Pula-pula-das-yungas
The Yungas Warbler is the southern counterpart of the Three-striped Warbler and was long considered a subspecies of it. It lives in the Yungas, the humid montane forests of the eastern Andean slope of south-eastern Peru and Bolivia. Like its northern relative, it moves through the understorey in small groups.
Voice
The call is a sharp chik; groups give a shrill, persistent chatter. The song is a fast, thin jumble of high notes, often by several birds at once.
Recording: Jacob Wijpkema — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
13.5 cm. The head pattern resembles that of Three-striped Warbler: black lateral crown stripes, a buff central crown stripe and supercilium, and a dark cheek patch, but the head stripes are often less sharp and more brownish black. The upperparts are olive-green; the underparts are dull yellow to buffy yellow with dark spots or streaks on the breast. The sexes are alike; juveniles are duller and browner.
Confusion species
Three-striped Warbler Basileuterus tristriatus lives farther north, lacks the breast spotting and has a sharper black-and-pale head pattern. Golden-crowned Warbler Basileuterus culicivorus has a yellow to orange central crown stripe and no dark cheek patch. Two-banded Warbler Myiothlypis bivittata has an orange-yellow crown stripe, an olive head without a cheek patch and unspotted yellow underparts.
Habitat
Understorey and lower middle levels of humid montane forest and cloud forest in the Yungas, also old secondary forest and sheltered forest edges, mainly between 1000 and 2500 m. It lives in groups that pick insects from leaves and twigs and often form the core of mixed flocks. The nest is probably, as in related species, a domed structure on the ground.
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 south-east, on the eastern Andean slope of Puno. Bolivia: in the Yungas of La Paz and Cochabamba to western Santa Cruz. Absent from Colombia, Ecuador and the Galápagos. It does not occur outside the guide area; the species is endemic to the southern part of the eastern Andean slope.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Search along the old roads through the Yungas, for example above Coroico or in the Chapare, for groups moving through the understorey and chattering; check the spotted breast to separate it from its relatives.
Conservation status
Least Concern. Fairly common in continuous Yungas forest; dependent on forest, and therefore sensitive to logging and the conversion of montane forest to farmland.
Scientific name
Basileuterus punctipectus | Chapman, 1924
Chapman described the species in 1924 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Basileuterus was introduced in 1848 by Cabanis. The genus name is an Ancient Greek bird name, basileuteros, 'more kingly'. The species name comes from Latin punctum, 'spot', and pectus, 'breast', for the spotted breast. The specimen the first description was based on came from Yungas, Cochabamba, Bolivia.