Ash-browed Spinetail

Overview

The ash-browed spinetail (Cranioleuca curtata) is a species of bird in the ovenbird family Furnariidae. It is found across parts of South America, including Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, where it inhabits humid foothill and lower subtropical forests.

Identification

• Measures 14 to 15 cm in length and weighs between 14 and 21 g, with sexes having identical plumage.
• Features a dull brownish face with a supercilium that varies from bold whitish to obscure dingy gray, and a reddish chestnut crown.
• Possesses a graduated tail that is dark reddish chestnut, with feathers sometimes lacking barbs on their tips.
• Displays olive-greenish to mustard-yellow legs and feet, along with a dark brown to blackish maxilla and pinkish mandible.
• Song is described as a fast, accelerating, and fading trill of high-pitched, shrill notes, often with a bouncing-ball rhythm.

Habitat

This species inhabits humid foothill, lower subtropical forest, and montane evergreen forest. Its elevation range typically sits between 800 and 2,300 m in Colombia and mostly between 900 and 1,700 m in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, though it can occur locally between 650 and 2,500 m.

Diet

The ash-browed spinetail feeds on arthropods, foraging singly, in pairs, or within mixed-species flocks. It acrobatically probes and gleans prey from bark, moss, epiphytes, dead leaves, and debris while hitching along small branches, sometimes hanging upside down in the forest's middle levels to subcanopy.

Did you know?

Essentially nothing is known about the breeding biology of this species, with the only recorded observation being a single fledgling seen in March in northern Ecuador.