All species › Passerines › Ovenbirds and woodcreepers › Olivaceous Woodcreeper
Olivaceous Woodcreeper | Sittasomus griseicapillus
Grijze muisspecht | Trepatroncos oliváceo
The Olivaceous Woodcreeper is the smallest and plainest woodcreeper in the region: a slender, unstreaked bird that hitches up trunks like a treecreeper. In the Caribbean it occurs only on Tobago; it is absent from Trinidad. Some authors split the complex into several species; the Tobago birds belong to the western group.
Voice
A rapid staccato trill or thin rattle, which in the western birds, including those of Tobago, stays on one pitch; also short, sharp tsit calls.
Recording: Juan Freile — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
14–16 cm, slender, with a long stiff tail and a short, thin, straight bill. Head, nape and underparts are plain olive-grey, without streaks or spots. The back is olive-brown; the rump, wings and tail are rufous. In flight an ochre band across the flight feathers is visible. The iris is dark. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
Two other woodcreepers live on Tobago. Plain-brown Woodcreeper Dendrocincla fuliginosa is larger and browner, with a greyish face with a dark malar stripe and a longer, heavier bill. Cocoa Woodcreeper Xiphorhynchus susurrans is much larger, with a long, slightly curved bill and pale spots on the head, throat and breast. Small woodpeckers also climb trunks, but have chisel-shaped bills and different plumage.
Habitat
Humid and semi-evergreen forest on the Main Ridge, but also drier deciduous woodland, secondary forest and forest edge in the lowlands. It hitches up trunks, branches and lianas in short jerks, gleaning arthropods, beetles and ants from the bark; it also takes flying insects in a short sally. It often joins mixed-species flocks of insectivores. The nest is in a tree cavity or behind loose bark.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
In the Caribbean only on Tobago, where it is fairly common in almost all forest types on the island. It is absent from Trinidad. Outside the region from central Mexico through Central America and across much of South America to northern Argentina and Uruguay.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
On Tobago along the roads and trails through the Main Ridge forest, for example at Gilpin Trace, often in mixed flocks of insectivores. A small, unstreaked woodcreeper with rufous wings and tail there is almost certainly this species.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The species has a very large range and occurs in many forest types, including secondary forest and plantations.
Scientific name
Sittasomus griseicapillus | (Vieillot, 1818)
Vieillot described the species in 1818 as Dendrocopus griseicapillus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Sittasomus was introduced in 1827 by Swainson. Sittasomus combines the genus Sitta (nuthatches) with Greek sōma 'body': 'with the body of a nuthatch'. griseicapillus is Latin, from griseus 'grey' and capillus 'hair (of the head)', after the grey head. The specimen the first description was based on came from Concepción, Paraguay.