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Spotted Barbtail | Premnoplex brunnescens
Vlekborstboomloper | Subepalo moteado
The Spotted Barbtail is a small, dark brown ovenbird of the understorey of humid montane forest that creeps up mossy trunks and branches like a woodcreeper. It is marked by its pale throat and the pale, dark-edged spots on the breast. In the guide area it lives only in the mountains of Costa Rica and Panama.
Voice
The song is a high, thin trill that often accelerates. The call is a sharp, high tseet.
Recording: rudy gelis — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
13–15 cm. Upperparts dark brown, head slightly darker with a narrow ochre-buff eyebrow. Throat ochre-buff. Breast and belly dark brown with numerous ochre-buff, black-edged drop-shaped spots, especially on the breast. Tail blackish; the feather shafts project at the tip as short spines and the tail is used as a prop when climbing. Bill short and straight. Sexes alike.
Confusion species
Ruddy Treerunner Margarornis rubiginosus is brighter rufous-brown with a white throat and lives mainly higher in the trees and higher in the mountains. Spotted Woodcreeper Xiphorhynchus erythropygius is much larger, with a longer bill and a rufous tail.
Habitat
Understorey and lower middle levels of humid, mossy montane and foothill forest, often in ravines and along streams, mainly between about 700 and 2500 m. It climbs trunks, vines and mossy branches and searches moss and bark for insects and spiders; it often travels with mixed flocks. The nest is a ball of moss, usually in a cavity in a bank or among roots.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Mountains of Costa Rica and Panama. Outside the guide area in the Andes and adjacent ranges from Venezuela and Colombia to Bolivia.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Regularly seen in the cloud forests of Monteverde and at Tapantí in Costa Rica. In mixed flocks, look for a small, dark bird climbing low up a mossy trunk.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Fairly common in suitable montane forest, but easily overlooked because of its dark colour and its life in the understorey.
Scientific name
Premnoplex brunnescens | (Sclater, 1856)
Sclater described the species in 1856 as Margarornis brunnescens; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Premnoplex was introduced in 1891 by Cherrie. Premnoplex is Greek, from premnon 'tree trunk' and plēssō 'to strike', after its foraging on trunks. brunnescens is Latin for 'brownish', after the dark brown plumage. The specimen the first description was based on came from Bogotá, Colombia.