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Isthmian Wren | Cantorchilus elutus
Panamawinterkoning | Soterrey istmeño
The Isthmian Wren is a brown Cantorchilus wren with a white supercilium, pale underparts and a barred tail. It was long included in Cabanis's Wren (formerly Plain Wren) and occurs only in southern Costa Rica and Panama. It lives in pairs in thickets and scrub.
Voice
Pairs sing duets of short, clear whistled phrases repeated in a steady rhythm. Also dry, ticking or rattling calls.
Recording: Robert Beauchamp — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
12–13 cm. Upperparts warm brown, rump and tail more rufous, tail with narrow black bars; the wings are also finely barred. White supercilium above a dark eye-stripe, cheeks white with fine grey streaks. Throat and breast white, flanks and lower belly buff to pale rusty. Sexes alike.
Confusion species
Cabanis's Wren Cantorchilus modestus is very similar and is best told by range and song; it lives further north, to central Costa Rica. Canebrake Wren Cantorchilus zeledoni (Caribbean slope, to Bocas del Toro) is larger and greyer. Buff-breasted Wren Cantorchilus leucotis of central and eastern Panama is buff throughout below, including the throat and breast.
Habitat
Thickets, overgrown fields and pastures, scrub along roads and rivers and forest edges, in both humid and drier country, from the lowlands into the mountains. It forages low in vegetation for insects and spiders.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
South-western Costa Rica (Pacific slope) and Panama, on both sides of the mountains except the extreme north-west (Bocas del Toro). Does not occur outside the guide area.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Common in thickets and roadside scrub over much of Panama. Listen for the rhythmic duet; the bird often then shows briefly at the edge of the scrub.
Conservation status
Not assessed separately by the IUCN; as part of the former, broader species it is listed as not threatened. It benefits from open, shrubby country and is common.
Scientific name
Cantorchilus elutus | (Bangs, 1902) (GBIF: Cantorchilus modestus)
Bangs described the species in 1902 as Thryophilus modestus elutus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Cantorchilus was introduced in 2006 by Mann, Barker, Graves, Dingess-Mann & Slater. Cantorchilus combines Latin cantus 'song' with Greek orkhilos 'wren': 'song wren'. elutus is Latin for 'washed out, insipid', from eluere 'to wash out', after the pale plumage. The specimen the first description was based on came from Loma del León, Panama.