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Scrub Greenlet | Hylophilus flavipes
Struikvireo | Verdillo matorralero
The Scrub Greenlet is a small, inconspicuous vireo of dry scrub and open country with thickets. It is olive-green and yellowish, with a pale bill, pale legs and a pale eye. In the guide area it lives mainly in Panama.
Voice
The song is a long, monotonous series of rapidly repeated, identical whistled notes, often coming from a bird hidden in the scrub.
Recording: Johan Chaves — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
11–12 cm. Upperparts olive-green, crown somewhat browner. Underparts dull yellowish, paler on the throat and belly. Eye pale grey to whitish. Bill and legs pale, pinkish to yellowish. No wing bars or eye-ring.
Confusion species
Lesser Greenlet Pachysylvia decurtata is smaller and more compact with a shorter tail, a dark eye and a conspicuous white eye-ring, and lives in the canopy of humid forest. Golden-fronted Greenlet Pachysylvia aurantiifrons has a dark eye and a yellowish forehead.
Habitat
Dry and semi-arid scrub, savanna with thickets, overgrown pastures and edges of dry and secondary forest, in the lowlands. Searches for insects in dense shrubs and low trees.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
In the guide area mainly in Panama, where it occurs chiefly on the Pacific slope. Outside the guide area in northern Colombia and Venezuela and on Tobago.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Best found by its song in dry scrub and savanna on the Pacific slope of Panama.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Locally fairly common in open, scrubby country.
Scientific name
Hylophilus flavipes | de Lafresnaye, 1845
De Lafresnaye described the species in 1845 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Hylophilus was introduced in 1822 by Temminck. Hylophilus is Greek, from hulē 'woodland' and philos 'loving': 'woodland-lover'. flavipes is Latin, from flavus 'yellow' and pes 'foot', after the pale yellowish legs. The specimen the first description was based on came from Bogotá, Colombia.