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Wrenthrush | Zeledonia coronata
Zeledonia | Reinita de Zeledón
The Wrenthrush is a small, stocky, almost tailless songbird of the undergrowth of the highest montane forests of Costa Rica and western Panama. It lives hidden in dense bamboo and on the damp forest floor and is heard more often than seen. The species is placed in its own family, Zeledoniidae, which is most closely related to the New World warblers.
Voice
The call is a very high, thin and piercing tseeet, often repeated and hard to locate. The song is a short series of high, thin whistles.
Recording: Beth Cottam — CC0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
11–12 cm. Small and round, with a short tail, short, rounded wings and long, slender legs. Crown orange to golden-brown, bordered at the sides by a narrow black line. Forehead, face and underparts slate-grey. Upperparts, wings and tail dark olive-brown. Bill short, thin and black. The sexes are alike; juveniles are duller and browner, with an olive crown. It moves with quick hops and often flicks its wings.
Confusion species
Silvery-fronted Tapaculo Scytalopus argentifrons lives in the same undergrowth and is just as small and short-tailed, but is entirely dark slate-grey with a silvery-white forehead and no orange crown. Grey-breasted Wood Wren Henicorhina leucophrys has a white supercilium, a streaked face and a brown back. Ruddy-capped Nightingale-Thrush Catharus frantzii also has a rufous crown but is much larger, with a longer tail and grey underparts but no slate-grey face.
Habitat
Dense undergrowth of humid montane rainforest and oak forest, especially bamboo (Chusquea), ferns and mossy ravines, up to the edge of the páramo, mostly above about 1800 m and up to about 3400 m. It searches the ground and low vegetation for insects and other small invertebrates. The nest is a domed structure of moss with a side entrance, placed 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
Endemic to the guide area: high mountains of Costa Rica (Cordillera de Tilarán, Cordillera Central and Cordillera de Talamanca) and western Panama (Chiriquí and the adjacent mountains into Veraguas).
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Found along quiet forest trails through bamboo on Cerro de la Muerte and in Los Quetzales National Park in Costa Rica and on Volcán Barú in Panama; the best chance is early in the morning, listening patiently for the high call and scanning the ground beneath the bamboo.
Conservation status
Not threatened (LC). Small range, but much of it lies within protected areas; locally fairly common, although seldom seen.
Scientific name
Zeledonia coronata | Ridgway, 1889
Ridgway described the species in 1889 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. He introduced the genus Zeledonia in that same work. Zeledonia honours the Costa Rican ornithologist José Castulo Zeledón (1846–1923), founder of ornithology in Costa Rica. coronata is Latin for 'crowned', after the orange-rufous crown. The specimen the first description was based on came from crater lake of Poás Volcano, Costa Rica.