All species › Passerines › Ovenbirds and woodcreepers › Scaly-throated Leaftosser
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
Scaly-throated Leaftosser | Sclerurus guatemalensis
Schubkeelbladkrabber | Tirahojas barbiescamado
The Scaly-throated Leaftosser is a stocky, dark brown ground bird of humid lowland forest, with a pale, scaly throat. Like other leaftossers it flicks leaves over on the forest floor with its bill in search of insects. It rarely shows itself well but gives itself away by its loud song and sharp call.
Voice
The song is a loud, accelerating series of sharp whistles that fade somewhat at the end. The call is a sharp, piercing speek, often given when flushed.
Recording: Juan Freile — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
17–18 cm. Upperparts plain dark brown, rump hardly paler; tail short and blackish. Throat whitish with dark scaling, breast brown with pale buffy scales, belly dark brown. Bill fairly short, straight and sturdy, blackish. Male and female are alike.
Confusion species
Tawny-throated Leaftosser Sclerurus mexicanus has a plain rufous throat and breast, a rufous rump and a longer, slightly decurved bill, and usually lives higher up. Grey-throated Leaftosser Sclerurus albigularis (Costa Rica and western Panama, higher in the mountains) has a grey throat and a rufous breast band without scales.
Habitat
Floor of humid evergreen lowland and foothill forest, also mature secondary forest; mainly in shady places with much leaf litter, often near streams and ravines. It digs a nest tunnel in an earth bank.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
South-eastern Mexico (from southern Veracruz and northern Oaxaca through Tabasco and Chiapas, also on the Yucatán Peninsula) through Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica to Panama. Outside the guide area in Colombia and north-western Ecuador.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Look for it in larger lowland forests such as La Selva in Costa Rica. Listen for the rustle of tossed leaves; a flushed bird flies off low and often lands on a low branch.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Rather scarce and tied to continuous forest; disappears where forest is cleared or heavily fragmented.
Scientific name
Sclerurus guatemalensis | (Hartlaub, 1844)
Hartlaub described the species in 1844 as Tinactor guatemalensis; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Sclerurus was introduced in 1827 by Swainson. Sclerurus is Greek, from sklēros 'stiff, hard' and oura 'tail', after the stiff tail feathers. guatemalensis means 'from Guatemala', the country the type specimen presumably came from. The specimen the first description was based on came from Guatemala (inferred; no locality given).