All species › Passerines › Ovenbirds and woodcreepers › Streak-headed Woodcreeper
Streak-headed Woodcreeper | Lepidocolaptes souleyetii
Streepkopmuisspecht | Trepatroncos corona rayada
The Streak-headed Woodcreeper is a slim, medium-sized woodcreeper which on Trinidad lives mainly in open, wooded lowland country. It hitches up trunks and thick branches in a spiral, propped on its stiff tail, and probes bark crevices and epiphytes for insects with its thin, curved bill. In the region it occurs only on Trinidad.
Voice
The song is a clear, descending trill lasting 1.5 to 3 seconds, soft and melodious, trrrrrrrrr. Also a shorter, rattling trill and a soft, plaintive call.
Recording: Paul Driver — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
19–21 cm, slim, with a long, thin, distinctly decurved bill that is pale horn to pinkish. The crown is dark brown with fine pale streaks, the face streaked, with an indistinct pale supercilium. The back is warm brown, wings and tail rufous. The throat is pale buff, the underparts olive-brown with pale, black-edged streaks, broadest on the breast. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
Cocoa Woodcreeper Xiphorhynchus susurrans is larger and heavier, with a straight, dark bill and a buff, spotted throat. Straight-billed Woodcreeper Dendroplex picus has a straight, pale, dagger-shaped bill, a white throat and a whitish face, and lives mainly in mangroves and open coastal country. Olivaceous Woodcreeper Sittasomus griseicapillus is smaller and unstreaked, with a grey head and a short bill. Plain-brown Woodcreeper Dendrocincla fuliginosa is uniformly brown with a straight bill.
Habitat
Semi-open country with trees: dry and semi-evergreen forest, forest edge, secondary growth, coastal woodland, cacao and other plantations, and gardens with large trees, mainly in the lowlands. It lives singly or in pairs and sometimes joins mixed flocks. It feeds on insects, spiders and other arthropods picked from bark, branches and epiphytes. The nest is placed 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 region only on Trinidad, where it is fairly common in the lowlands and on the lower slopes; it is absent from Tobago. Outside the region from southern Mexico through Central America to northern South America: Colombia, Venezuela, the Guianas, western Ecuador, north-western Peru and northern Brazil.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Found in open country with scattered large trees, cacao plantations and forest edges on Trinidad. The descending trill is the best clue; the bird can then be followed as it climbs a trunk in short hops and flies to the base of the next tree.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The species adapts well to semi-open, man-made landscapes such as plantations and yards with large trees.
Scientific name
Lepidocolaptes souleyetii | (des Murs, 1849)
Des Murs described the species in 1849 as Dendrocolaptes Souleyetii; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Lepidocolaptes was introduced in 1853 by Reichenbach. Lepidocolaptes is Greek, from lepis, lepidos 'scale' and kolaptēs 'chiseller, woodpecker', after the scaly markings on head and breast. souleyetii honours the French naval surgeon and zoologist Louis François Auguste Souleyet (1811–1852), who collected on the voyage of the Bonite. The specimen the first description was based on came from Paita, Peru.