Strong-billed Woodcreeper

Overview

The strong-billed woodcreeper (Xiphocolaptes promeropirhynchus) is a species of bird in the ovenbird family Furnariidae, noted as one of the largest members of this family and the heaviest woodcreeper. It is classified as a species of Least Concern by the IUCN Red List, although its population is believed to be decreasing.

Identification

• Adults of the nominate subspecies have a dark brown crown and nape with buff streaks, a dusky face with buffy lores, and a plain buffy throat.
• The belly and undertail coverts are tawny cinnamon with small dark spots or bars, while the breast and belly feature narrow buffy streaks.
• The bill is long, stout, and somewhat decurved, ranging in colour from grey to black, with bluish grey, green, or greyish black legs and feet.
• Vocalisations vary by location but are generally described as a long, ringing, descending sequence of disyllabic whistles, such as a thin, nasal rising note in northern Central America.

Habitat

The species inhabits a wide variety of temperate, subtropical, and tropical forested landscapes, favouring the interior of primary forest as well as its edges, semi-open forest, and mature secondary forest. It is found across a broad range from sea level to 3,500 m, including montane forest, oak and pine-oak associations, humid evergreen forest, and cloudforest. It mostly shuns fragmented forests, plantations, and young secondary forest.

Diet

The strong-billed woodcreeper feeds mostly on arthropods but also includes small vertebrates in its diet. It forages by creeping up trunks and along limbs, probing foliage, bark, dead wood, leaf litter, bromeliads, and epiphytes, and less often sallies out to glean from foliage. It sometimes follows army ant swarms to capture prey disturbed on the ground or on low trunks.

Did you know?

The strong-billed woodcreeper is the heaviest woodcreeper, although it is not the largest overall, as the great rufous woodcreeper is larger and the slender long-billed woodcreeper is longer.