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Bare-crowned Antbird | Gymnocichla nudiceps
Kaalkopmiervogel | Hormiguero calvo
The Bare-crowned Antbird owes its name to the bare, bright blue crown of the male. It lives in dense thickets and rank growth at forest edges in the humid lowlands and regularly follows army-ant swarms. In the guide area it lives from Honduras to Panama.
Voice
A fast series of loud, clear whistled notes. Also harsh, short calls.
Recording: Bram Vogels — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
15–16 cm. The male is entirely black, with bare, bright blue skin on the forehead and crown and narrow white tips to the wing coverts. The female has olive-brown upperparts, rufous underparts and bare blue skin only around the eye; the wing coverts have buff tips. Tail fairly long.
Confusion species
Male Zeledon's Antbird Hafferia zeledoni is larger and all black with blue skin around the eye, but has a feathered crown. Jet Antbird Cercomacra nigricans is smaller and slimmer, without bare skin, and has white tips to the tail feathers. The female resembles female Chestnut-backed Antbird Poliocrania exsul, which is smaller, with a dark head and a chestnut back.
Habitat
Dense thickets, rank growth and young secondary forest, overgrown clearings and forest edges in the humid lowlands, also along rivers; usually low. It searches for insects low in the vegetation and on the ground and regularly follows army-ant swarms.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Caribbean slope of Honduras and Nicaragua to Costa Rica; in Panama on both slopes. Outside the guide area in northern Colombia.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Look in impenetrable rank growth at forest edges and along rivers in the Caribbean lowlands of Costa Rica and in Panama. The bird often shows only briefly; the chance is greatest at an army-ant swarm.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Generally uncommon to fairly common; also occurs in secondary growth.
Scientific name
Gymnocichla nudiceps | (Cassin, 1850)
Cassin described the species in 1850 as Myiothera nudiceps; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Gymnocichla was introduced in 1858 by Sclater. Gymnocichla is Greek, from gumnos 'naked, bare' and kikhlē 'thrush', after the bare blue head of the male. nudiceps is Latin, from nudus 'naked, bare' and -ceps '-headed', after the male's bare, bright blue crown. The specimen the first description was based on came from Isthmus of Panama.