Yellow-chinned Spinetail

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Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Passeriformes
Family:	Furnariidae
Genus:	Certhiaxis
Species:	C. cinnamomea

Binomial name

Certhiaxis cinnamomea
(Gmelin, 1788)

The Yellow-chinned Spinetail Certhiaxis cinnamomea is a passerine bird found in the tropical New World from Trinidad and Colombia south to Argentina and Uruguay. This species is a common resident breeder in marshes and the edges of mangrove swamps.

It is a member of the South American bird family Furnariidae, a group in which many species build elaborate clay nests, giving rise to the English name for the family of "ovenbirds".

However, the Stripe-breasted Spinetail constructs a large spherical stick nest, usually low in a mangrove or other marsh vegetation. The tubular entrance tunnel rises almost vertically from the base to the top of the nest. The normal clutch is three, sometimes four, greenish white eggs.

This spinetail is parasitised by the Striped Cuckoo, which lays one or two eggs in the nest, but it is not known how the cuckoo enters the nest or ejects the host's young.

The Yellow-chinned Spinetail is typically 15 cm long, and weighs 15 g. It is a slender bird with a long tail. The upperparts and head are chestnut brown, and the underparts are whitish apart from the pale yellow throat. The sexes are similar, but there are several races, differing in forecrown colour or upperparts tone.

The Yellow-chinned Spinetail feeds on insects and spiders, keeping low and often in the open. It is a conspicuous, confiding and noisy bird, with a shrill rattling call.

[edit] Species range in the Amazon Basin

The Yellow-chinned Spinetail is found in all contiguous regions of Brazil, except specific parts of the Amazon Basin. It is found mostly in upstream, headwater regions: the northwest cerrado in the southeast basin, and the headwaters of the south-flowing Branco River in the north central of Brazil's Roraima state as it borders the Guiana Highlands. In the Guianas, the species is only along the Caribbean-Atlantic coast, a continuous coastal strip that extends from northern Brazil's Amapá state, and the Amazon outlet, to northern Colombia.

As its sister species Red-and-white Spinetail is found along the Amazon River corridor, so also is the Yellow-chinned. From the Amazon's outlet, upstream it is only in a river corridor, and narrows again and bifurcates into the southwest quadrant into Bolivia, up the Madeira River. The entire eastern half of Amazonian Bolivia is part of the species range, the eastern headwater rivers to the Madeira. The other split of the range is on the Amazon River corridor which continues to Peru's border at the Andes foothills; this is the only Andean, western region of the Amazon basin from Venezuela-Colombia-Peru. This split pattern range is very similar to a 4–leaf clover, unequal sizes.

[edit] References

ffrench, Richard (1991). A Guide to the Birds of Trinidad and Tobago, 2nd edition, Comstock Publishing. ISBN 0-8014-9792-2.
Hilty, Steven L (2003). Birds of Venezuela. London: Christopher Helm. ISBN 0-7136-6418-5.