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Pale-breasted Spinetail | Synallaxis albescens
Temmincks stekelstaart | Pijuí pechiblanco
The Pale-breasted Spinetail is a small, inconspicuous ovenbird of grassland and rank growth. It keeps hidden in dense grass and scrub and is mostly noticed by its endlessly repeated two-note call. Trinidad holds the subspecies trinitatis, which also occurs in eastern Venezuela.
Voice
An endlessly repeated, sharp and scratchy wee-bzzt or wee-tee, often all day long, including in the midday heat. Also short, nasal and buzzy calls.
Recording: Franco Vushurovich — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
13–16 cm, small, with a long, graduated, grey-brown tail with spiny feather tips and a short bill. Crown and bend of the wing are rufous, the forehead olive-grey and the face pale grey-brown with a paler line through the eye. The back is olive-brown. The throat is whitish with a dark, black-flecked patch, the breast pale buffy grey and the belly whitish. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
Yellow-chinned Spinetail Certhiaxis cinnamomeus is entirely rufous above, has a white throat without a dark patch and lives in marshes. Stripe-breasted Spinetail Synallaxis cinnamomea is warmer brown, with a black-and-white streaked throat and streaked underparts, and lives in forest.
Habitat
Open grassland, savanna, rank growth with scattered shrubs, overgrown pastures and the edges of fields and sugar cane, in the lowlands. It forages hidden low in grass and shrubs for insects and spiders. The nest is a globe of grass and thorny twigs with a horizontal tubular entrance, within 2 m of the ground in a grass tussock or tangled shrub. Spinetail nests are parasitised by Striped Cuckoo Tapera naevia.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
In the region only on Trinidad, where it is fairly common in open, grassy lowland country; it is absent from Tobago. Outside the region from Costa Rica and Panama through much of South America east of the Andes to northern Argentina.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Best found by listening for the repeated call in grassland with scattered shrubs and along field edges on Trinidad. A singing bird sometimes sits briefly in the open on a grass stem or small shrub, but drops quickly out of sight when disturbed.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The species benefits locally from forest clearance, which creates open, grassy country.
Scientific name
Synallaxis albescens | Temminck, 1823
Temminck described the species in 1823 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Synallaxis was introduced in 1818 by Vieillot. Synallaxis is Greek, from sunallaxis 'exchange'; why Vieillot chose the name is unclear. albescens is Latin for 'whitish', after the pale underparts. The specimen the first description was based on came from near Sorocaba, São Paulo, Brazil.