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Fasciated Antshrike | Cymbilaimus lineatus
Zebramierklauwier | Batará lineado
The Fasciated Antshrike is a large, finely barred antshrike of humid lowland forest, with a heavy hooked bill and red eyes. It keeps to dense vine tangles at middle levels and is heard more often than seen. In the guide area it lives from eastern Honduras to Panama.
Voice
A short series of three to six soft, whistled notes on the same pitch, cue-cue-cue, repeated for long periods.
Recording: Richard E. Webster — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
16–18 cm, with a heavy bill hooked at the tip and red eyes. Male black with narrow, wavy white bars over the whole body; crown black. Female rufous-brown above with black bars and a plain chestnut crown; ochre below with fine black bars.
Confusion species
Barred Antshrike Thamnophilus doliatus has yellow eyes, an obvious crest and a smaller bill and lives in scrub and semi-open country; the female is plain rufous-brown with no bars above. Black Antshrike Thamnophilus nigriceps (eastern Panama) is plain black without bars.
Habitat
Middle levels and lower canopy of humid evergreen lowland and foothill forest, especially in dense vine tangles at forest edges, along clearings and in older secondary forest, mostly below 1000 m. It searches dead-leaf clusters and foliage for large insects, alone or in pairs, sometimes with mixed flocks.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
From eastern Honduras through Nicaragua and Costa Rica (mainly on the Caribbean slope) to Panama, where it occurs on both slopes. Outside the guide area in northern and western South America and much of Amazonia.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Best found by its soft, repeated whistles. Regularly heard along Pipeline Road (Camino del Oleoducto) in Panama and at La Selva in Costa Rica; often hard to see in the vines.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Fairly common in forest and older secondary forest, but disappears where forest is cleared entirely.
Scientific name
Cymbilaimus lineatus | (Leach, 1814)
Leach described the species in 1814 as Lanius lineatus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Cymbilaimus was introduced in 1840 by Gray. Cymbilaimus combines Latin cymba 'small boat' with the shrike genus Lanius; Cabanis and Heine themselves derived the ending from Greek laimos 'throat'. lineatus is Latin for 'lined', after the fine black-and-white barring. The specimen the first description was based on came from Berbice, Guyana.