All species › Passerines › Wrens › Rufous-breasted Wren
Position in the tree Birds Aves › Birds with a flexible palate Neognathae › All other modern birds Neoaves › Landbirds Telluraves › Falcons, parrots and passerines Australaves › Falcons and passerines Eufalconimorphae › Parrots and passerines Psittacopasserae
Rufous-breasted Wren | Pheugopedius rutilus
Roodborstwinterkoning | Cucarachero pechirrufo
The Rufous-breasted Wren is a medium-sized wren with a black-and-white speckled face and an orange-rufous breast. It forages at mid-levels in vine tangles and dense foliage at forest edges and is heard more often than seen. In the guide area it lives in Costa Rica and Panama.
Voice
A clear, fast song of short whistled phrases, each repeated a few times before switching to another phrase; pair members sometimes duet. The call is a dry, rattling chrrr.
Recording: Sue Riffe — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
13–14 cm. Crown and back brown, tail greyish brown with black bars. A white supercilium; cheeks, throat and sides of the neck densely speckled black and white. Breast bright orange-rufous, belly and flanks paler, greyish brown to dull buff. Bill fairly long and dark. Sexes alike.
Confusion species
Spot-breasted Wren Pheugopedius maculipectus (further north, to northern Costa Rica) has a white breast with dense black spots instead of an orange-rufous breast. Black-bellied Wren Pheugopedius fasciatoventris is larger, with a white breast and a black belly. Buff-breasted Wren Cantorchilus leucotis (Panama) has an unspotted throat and dull buff underparts.
Habitat
Forest edges, mature secondary forest, clearings in humid and semi-humid forest, shade-coffee plantations and scrub with vines, from the lowlands into the lower mountains. It forages mainly at mid-levels in dense foliage and vine tangles for insects and spiders, often with mixed flocks.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
In Costa Rica mainly on the Pacific slope and in the Central Valley; in Panama mainly on the Pacific slope. Outside the guide area in Colombia, Venezuela and on Trinidad and Tobago.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
The song is the best clue; the bird itself often stays hidden in vine tangles and usually shows only briefly when it moves with a mixed flock.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Fairly common and also found in secondary forest and plantations with trees.
Scientific name
Pheugopedius rutilus | (Vieillot, 1819)
Vieillot described the species in 1819 as Thryothorus rutilus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Pheugopedius was introduced in 1851 by Cabanis. Pheugopedius is Greek, from pheugō 'to shun, flee' and pedion 'plain, open country': a bird that shuns the open ground. rutilus is Latin for 'red, auburn', after the rufous breast. The specimen the first description was based on came from Trinidad (restricted; originally 'North America').