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Fawn-throated Foliage-gleaner | Automolus cervinigularis
Bruinkeelbladspeurder | Musguero garganta pálida
The Fawn-throated Foliage-gleaner is a fairly large, brown foliage-gleaner of the understorey of humid lowland forest, with a pale buffy throat and a rufous tail. It searches dense vegetation and vine tangles for insects and is heard more often than seen. In the guide area it lives from south-eastern Mexico to Panama.
Voice
The song is a fast, descending series of harsh, rattling notes. Also short, harsh calls.
Recording: Nelson Apolo — CC BY-NC 4.0 · converted to mono · iNaturalist
Identification
18–19 cm. Upperparts plain olive-brown, tail rufous. A buffy eyering and line behind the eye. Throat pale buff, often puffed out when calling; rest of the underparts browner, sometimes faintly mottled on the breast. Bill fairly stout and straight.
Confusion species
Chiriqui Foliage-gleaner Automolus exsertus is very similar but lives on the Pacific slope of Costa Rica and western Panama; it is separated mainly by range and song. Western Woodhaunter Automolus virgatus is smaller, with fine pale streaks on the head and underparts. Ochre-throated Foliage-gleaner Automolus ochrolaemus occurs in the guide area only in eastern Panama.
Habitat
Understorey and lower middle storey of humid evergreen lowland and foothill forest, also mature secondary forest and edges with dense vines, to about 1000 m. Forages singly or in pairs among dead leaves and vines for insects and other invertebrates, often with mixed flocks. Nests in a burrow it digs in an earth bank.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Caribbean slope of south-eastern Mexico (southern Veracruz and Oaxaca, Tabasco, Chiapas and the base of the Yucatán Peninsula) through Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua to Costa Rica and Panama. The boundary with Ochre-throated Foliage-gleaner in Panama is not precisely known.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Usually heard first: the harsh, descending rattle from dense cover gives the bird away, which may then show briefly among the vines.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Fairly common in continuous forest; declines where forest is cleared.
Scientific name
Automolus cervinigularis | (Sclater, 1857) (GBIF: Automolus ochrolaemus)
Sclater described the species in 1857 as Anabates cervinigularis; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Automolus was introduced in 1853 by Reichenbach. Automolus is Greek, from automolos 'deserter, defector'; why Reichenbach chose the name is unclear. cervinigularis is Latin, from cervinus 'fawn-coloured' and gularis '-throated', after the buffy throat. The specimen the first description was based on came from Córdoba, Veracruz, Mexico.