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Choco Tapaculo | Scytalopus chocoensis
Chocótapaculo | Tapaculo del Chocó
The Choco Tapaculo is a small, dark grey tapaculo of the lower mountain slopes of the Chocó region. In the guide area it occurs only in eastern Darién in Panama.
Voice
A repeated series of short, sharp notes from dense vegetation; often heard rather than seen.
Recording: Juan Freile — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
11 cm, with a short, often cocked tail and sturdy legs. Male uniformly dark slate-grey, without a pale eyebrow; flanks and undertail-coverts brown with dark bars. Female and juveniles browner.
Confusion species
Tacarcuna Tapaculo Scytalopus panamensis lives higher on the mountains of eastern Darién and has a whitish eyebrow. Nightingale-wrens of the genus Microcerculus are brown, with a long, thin bill and a very short tail.
Habitat
Dense understorey of humid foothill and lower montane forest in the Chocó region, with fallen trunks, ferns and moss, often in ravines. It lives hidden on and just above the forest floor.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
In the guide area only in the mountains of eastern Darién, including Cerro Pirre. Outside the guide area along the western slopes of the Andes in Colombia to north-western Ecuador.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In the guide area reachable only in remote parts of Darién. Listening for the call in dense understorey and then waiting patiently at a gap is the best method.
Conservation status
Not threatened. In the guide area restricted to a small, remote area where the forest is largely intact.
Scientific name
Scytalopus chocoensis | Krabbe & Schulenberg, 1997
Krabbe & Schulenberg described the species in 1997 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Scytalopus was introduced in 1837 by Gould. Scytalopus is Greek, from skutalē 'stick, cudgel' and pous 'foot', after the stout legs. chocoensis means 'from the Chocó', the wet forest region of western Colombia and northwestern Ecuador. The specimen the first description was based on came from El Placer, Esmeraldas, Ecuador.