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Dusky Antbird | Cercomacroides tyrannina
Tiranmiervogel | Hormiguero tirano
The Dusky Antbird is a small, slender antbird of dense thickets at forest edges and in secondary forest. The male is grey with black-and-white wing coverts, the female olive-brown with ochre underparts. Pairs often sing in duet. In the guide area it lives from south-eastern Mexico to Panama.
Voice
The male's song is an accelerating, rising series of whistled notes; the female often answers with a series of her own, producing a duet. Also a short, rasping call.
Recording: Juan Freile — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
14 cm. Male: slate grey, slightly paler below; wing coverts blackish with narrow white fringes; tail grey with narrow white tips. Female: upperparts olive-brown, wing coverts with faint pale fringes; underparts warm ochre to ochre-brown. Bill fine and black.
Confusion species
Black-crowned Antshrike Thamnophilus atrinucha is larger, with a heavier, hook-tipped bill; the male has a black crown, the female a rufous crown. The male Jet Antbird Cercomacra nigricans (in Panama) is jet black with clear white wing bars and broad white tail tips.
Habitat
Dense thickets, vine tangles and undergrowth at forest edges, in clearings and in secondary forest of humid lowlands and foothills; also in overgrown shade-coffee and cacao plantations. It eats insects gleaned from leaves.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
From south-eastern Mexico along the Caribbean slope of Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua to Costa Rica, in south-western Costa Rica also on the Pacific slope; in Panama on both slopes. Outside the guide area in north-western South America to western Ecuador, and in eastern Venezuela, the Guianas and northern Brazil.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
The duet gives a pair away in dense thickets along forest trails, for example at La Selva in Costa Rica. Wait patiently for one of the birds to perch in an opening.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Common at forest edges and in secondary forest.
Scientific name
Cercomacroides tyrannina | (Sclater, 1855) (GBIF: Cercomacra tyrannina)
Sclater described the species in 1855 as Pyriglena tyrannina; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Cercomacroides was introduced in 2014 by Tello & Raposo. Cercomacroides is the genus Cercomacra ('long-tail') plus Greek -oidēs 'resembling'. tyrannina refers to the kingbird genus Tyrannus with Latin -inus 'resembling'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Bogotá, Colombia.