Checker-throated Antwren
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| Myrmotherula fulviventris (Lawrence, 1862)) |
The Checker-throated Antwren or Fulvous-bellied Antwren, Myrmotherula fulviventris, is a small passerine bird in the antbird family. Its genus consists of several lineages; the Checker-throated Antwren and the other species with stippled throats are not closely related to the remainder, but rather to the Black Bushbird (Neoctantes niger), and will eventually be assigned to a different genus (Irestead et al., 2004).
It is a resident breeder in tropical Central and South America from northeastern Nicaragua to western Ecuador. In Central America, it occurs in the Caribbean lowlands and foothills up to 700 m altitude.
The Checker-throated Antwren is typically 10 cm long and weighs 10.5 g. Both sexes have olive-brown upperparts, paler buff-brown underparts, and blackish wings with buff wingbars. The adult male has a blackish throat, heavily spotted with white, a greyish wash to the breast, and dusky sides to the head. The adult female has a buff throat and buff central breast. Young birds are brighter and more cinnamon than the adults, with less distinct wingbars and pale streaking on the under parts. This species has a thin cheep call, and the song is a loud tseek-tseek-tseek-tseek.
The Checker-throated Antwren is normally found as pairs or small groups, but often forms the core of a mixed-species feeding flock. It feeds on the eggs, larvae and adults of insects and spiders, taken from leaf litter, epiphyte bases and vine tangles in low vegetation or on the ground. This is a common bird in the understory of wet forest and in adjacent tall second growth. The female lays two lilac or red-brown spotted white eggs, which are incubated by both sexes, in a 15 cm deep pouch nest constructed from plant fibres and dead leaves. The nest is suspended from the last fork of a thin twig less than 2 m up. The male and female parents both feed the chicks. At territorial boundaries, males will perch 30 cm apart with lowered heads and puffed-out plumage and sway in opposite directions.
[edit] References
- Irestedt, Martin ; Fjeldså, Jon; Nylander, Johan A. A. & Ericson, Per G. P. (2004): Phylogenetic relationships of typical antbirds (Thamnophilidae) and test of incongruence based on Bayes factors. BMC Evol. Biol. 4: 23. DOI:10.1186/1471-2148-4-23 Supplementary information
- Stiles, F. Gary & Skutch, Alexander Frank (1989): A guide to the birds of Costa Rica. Comistock, Ithaca. ISBN 0-8014-9600-4
