Spotted Woodcreeper

Overview

The spotted woodcreeper (Xiphorhynchus erythropygius) is a medium-sized bird in the ovenbird family Furnariidae. It is found in a discontinuous range across Central America and western South America and is assessed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List.

Identification

• Length of 19 to 24 cm with a longish, slightly decurved and gradually tapering bill.
• Adults of the nominate subspecies possess a buff supercilium and eyering, with dusky olive ear coverts featuring buff streaks.
• Underparts are pale greenish olive with large buff teardrops, while the rump and tail are rufous-chestnut.
• The species is rather vocal, producing a song consisting of 2–5 long descending whistles that get progressively lower in pitch.

Habitat

This species inhabits humid forests, favouring tropical evergreen forest at lower elevations and evergreen montane or pine woodlands at higher altitudes. It tends to stay in the canopy of interior forests but is also found at forest edges and in older secondary growth, typically between 600 and 1,800 m elevation, though occasionally reaching 2,900 m or near sea level.

Diet

The diet consists mostly of arthropods but also includes small vertebrates and small amounts of vegetable matter. It usually forages singly, hitching up tree trunks and branches to glean bark or probe vine tangles, bromeliads, and epiphytes, though it sometimes joins mixed-species feeding flocks or follows army ant swarms.

Did you know?

Breeding details are limited, but in Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia the species nests in cavities in trees or stumps with a clutch size of exactly two eggs.