Tawny-winged Woodcreeper

Overview

The tawny-winged woodcreeper (Dendrocincla anabatina) is a passerine bird in the ovenbird family Furnariidae. It is a medium-sized species found in Central America and southern Mexico, primarily inhabiting humid evergreen forests.

Identification

• Length 17 to 19 cm with a straight bill, short tail, and ruffled nape.
• Nominate adults have a brown head with a buffy supercilium and bare gray skin around the eye.
• Upperparts are dark olive-brown, contrasting with cinnamon-rufous to rufous-chestnut tail and uppertail coverts; flight feathers are tawny with dusky tips.
• Song is a long rattle described as "whee-whee-whee-whee..." that may last more than a minute, accompanied by calls like "squirp" or "TEAURRR!".

Habitat

Found along the Caribbean slope from southeastern Mexico to eastern Nicaragua, the Yucatán Peninsula, and the Pacific slope from Costa Rica to Panama. It primarily inhabits mature humid evergreen primary and secondary forest, though it may also use forest edges, semi-deciduous forest, and mangroves in specific regions. The species tends to stay low to the ground, generally occurring below 500 m but reaching higher elevations in Mexico and Costa Rica.

Diet

A near-obligate follower of army ant swarms, it also occasionally forages following squirrel monkey troops. It clings to branches or trunks up to 3 m high, making short flights to the ground to capture arthropods and small vertebrates like lizards, though it does not eat the army ants themselves. It usually forages singly or in pairs, exhibiting high aggression towards other species and its own kind.

Did you know?

Despite following army ant swarms, the tawny-winged woodcreeper does not feed on the ants themselves but rather on the arthropod prey disturbed by them. Only the female is responsible for building the nest, incubating the eggs, and provisioning the nestlings.