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Olive-backed Quail-Dove | Leptotrygon veraguensis
Veraguakwartelduif | Paloma perdiz de Veragua
The Olive-backed Quail-Dove is a dark, heavily built quail-dove of wet lowland forest in the south-east of the guide area, from southern Nicaragua to Panama. A broad white stripe below the eye is its best field mark. The species is named after Veragua, an old name for western Panama, and outside the guide area occurs only in western Colombia and north-western Ecuador.
Voice
A low, short, single whoouw, with a rather frog-like quality, repeated at intervals of a few seconds. The sound does not carry far and is hard to locate in dense forest.
Recording: Olaf Jahn — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
21–25 cm, stocky, with a short tail and long legs. The forehead is white, shading into a grey crown and a purple-glossed hindcrown and nape. A broad white stripe runs below the eye, with a narrower black stripe beneath it. The upperparts are dark olive-brown to purplish brown, with a green or purple gloss on the nape and mantle. The throat is white, the breast grey-brown and glossed, the belly whitish to buff and the flanks reddish ochre. The female sometimes has a buff forehead and crown. Juveniles lack the gloss and have rufous feather edges.
Confusion species
Ruddy Quail-Dove Geotrygon montana is rufous, with an ochre rather than white stripe below the eye and a rufous malar stripe. Violaceous Quail-Dove Geotrygon violacea has a pale face without a stripe, a rufous-brown back and a red bill. Purplish-backed Quail-Dove Zentrygon lawrencii also has a white face stripe, but is greyer, with a purple mantle, and lives higher, in the montane forest of Costa Rica and Panama.
Habitat
The floor of dense, wet lowland and foothill forest and tall secondary forest, preferring humid ravines and stream sides; from sea level to about 900 m. It lives singly or in pairs and walks quietly over the leaf litter in search of seeds, fallen fruit and small invertebrates. When disturbed it walks away or flies off low on clattering wings.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
The Caribbean side of southern Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama, and in eastern Panama also the Pacific side, including Darién. Outside the guide area on the Pacific side of Colombia south to Esmeraldas in north-western Ecuador.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
The best chances are in undisturbed forest on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica, such as at La Selva, and in eastern Panama. Walking slowly along wet, quiet forest trails early in the morning and listening for the low whoouw is most productive; the white face stripe shows up even in the half-light of the forest floor.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The species is locally fairly common in the guide area, but depends on large, undisturbed lowland forest and declines where that forest disappears.
Scientific name
Leptotrygon veraguensis | (Lawrence, 1866)
Lawrence described the species in 1866 as Geotrygon Veraguensis; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Leptotrygon was introduced in 2013 by Banks, Weckstein, Remsen & Johnson. Leptotrygon is a blend of the genera Leptotila and Geotrygon, reflecting this quail-dove's relationship with both. veraguensis means 'of Veraguas', the province of Panama where the species was described from. The specimen the first description was based on came from Veraguas, Panama.