White-chinned Thistletail

Overview

The white-chinned thistletail (Asthenes fuliginosa), known as the colicardo barbiblanco in Ecuador, is a species of bird in the ovenbird family Furnariidae. It is the largest of the thistletails and is assessed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List.

Identification

• Length of 18 to 20 cm with a weight of 14 to 20 g, making it the largest thistletail.
• Plumage features dark reddish brown upperparts, a long deeply forked tail with a ragged appearance, and grayish underparts with a whitish chin.
• Bill is black to dark gray on the maxilla with a dark mandible that has a pinkish to whitish base; legs and feet are blue-gray to gray.
• Song includes a high-pitched, weak, ascending trill and a descending series of notes accelerating into a trill.

Habitat

Found in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela, the species inhabits páramo grasslands, elfin forest, the upper edge of cloud forest, and dense undergrowth at tree line. It generally ranges in elevation between 2,800 and 4,000 m, though it can occur as low as 2,400 m in Colombia.

Diet

The bird feeds mostly on arthropods, occasionally including small seeds. It usually forages singly or in pairs within the understory, gleaning prey from foliage and small branches, and rarely joins mixed-species feeding flocks.

Did you know?

While the nominate subspecies has a faint grayish-tawny supercilium, the A. f. plengei subspecies exhibits a longer and whiter supercilium along with redder upperparts and tail.