All species › Passerines › Ovenbirds and woodcreepers › Streaked Xenops
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Streaked Xenops | Xenops rutilans
Gestreepte xenops | Picolezna rayado
The Streaked Xenops is a small ovenbird with a short, wedge-shaped, upturned bill and streaked plumage. It lives in forest in the foothills and mountains and forages acrobatically along thin branches.
Voice
A short series of high, sharp notes, and thin, sharp calls.
Recording: Juan Freile — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
11–12 cm. Bill short and laterally compressed, with an upturned lower mandible. Head and mantle brown with pale streaks, a pale supercilium and a white malar stripe. Underparts olive-brown with pale buff streaks. Rump, wings and tail rufous; tail with black. Male and female are alike.
Confusion species
Northern Plain Xenops Xenops mexicanus is plain brown without streaks and lives mainly in the lowlands. Woodcreepers are larger and climb trunks using the tail as a prop.
Habitat
Humid foothill and montane forest, forest edge and mature secondary forest, in the guide area mainly in the foothills and lower mountains. It clambers along thin branches and vines, often upside down, chipping and tugging at dead twigs and bark to find insects. It often joins mixed-species foraging flocks. It nests in a cavity in rotten wood.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
In the guide area in Costa Rica and Panama. Outside the guide area widespread in South America, in the Andes and other forested regions south to northern Argentina and south-eastern Brazil.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Look for it in mixed flocks in mid-elevation forest in Costa Rica and Panama; check the streaked underparts to separate it from the plain xenops.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Widespread; in the guide area uncommon to fairly common and dependent on forest.
Scientific name
Xenops rutilans | Temminck, 1821
Temminck described the species in 1821 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Xenops was introduced in 1811 by Illiger. Xenops is Greek, from xenos 'strange' and ōps 'face', after the odd, upturned bill. rutilans is Latin for 'glowing reddish', after the rufous tail and wings. The specimen the first description was based on came from Brazil (not specified).