All species › Passerines › Tapaculos › Silvery-fronted Tapaculo
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Silvery-fronted Tapaculo | Scytalopus argentifrons
Costaricaanse tapaculo | Tapaculo frentiplateado
The Silvery-fronted Tapaculo is a small, dark grey ground bird of the understorey of high montane forest that creeps like a mouse through dense vegetation. It occurs only in the mountains of Costa Rica and western Panama.
Voice
A fast, sharp series of short notes, often repeated at length, and a rasping alarm call. It calls a lot and is therefore easier to hear than to see.
Recording: Beth Cottam — CC0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
10–11 cm, with a short, often cocked tail and sturdy legs. Male dark slate-grey, with a silvery-white patch on the forehead that continues as a short eyebrow; flanks and undertail-coverts brown with dark bars. Female browner, with less or no silvery white on the forehead. Juveniles are brown with dark bars.
Confusion species
Wrens such as Grey-breasted Wood Wren Henicorhina leucophrys have a clearly striped head and paler underparts. No other tapaculos occur in the same area within the guide area.
Habitat
Dense understorey of humid montane and cloud forest, especially on the higher slopes, with bamboo, ferns, fallen trunks and moss; also forest edges and scrub at the edge of the páramo. It searches on and just above the ground for small insects and spiders.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Endemic to the guide area: the mountains of Costa Rica, mainly the Cordillera Central and the Cordillera de Talamanca, and the adjacent mountains of western Panama.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Stand quietly at a densely overgrown forest edge where the bird is calling, and scan the ground and fallen logs. It often appears only very briefly in a gap.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Fairly common in suitable montane forest; much of its habitat lies within protected areas.
Scientific name
Scytalopus argentifrons | Ridgway, 1891
Ridgway described the species in 1891 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Scytalopus was introduced in 1837 by Gould. Scytalopus is Greek, from skutalē 'stick, cudgel' and pous 'foot', after the stout legs. argentifrons is Latin, from argentum 'silver' and frons 'forehead', after the male's silvery forehead and brow. The specimen the first description was based on came from Irazú Volcano, Costa Rica.