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Riverside Wren | Cantorchilus semibadius
Oeverwinterkoning | Cucarachero ribereño
The Riverside Wren is a rufous Cantorchilus wren with a black-and-white streaked face and a finely black-and-white barred belly. It lives only in south-western Costa Rica and western Panama, usually in dense vegetation along streams and rivers.
Voice
Pairs sing duets of clear, rapidly repeated whistled phrases. Also a dry rattle.
Recording: Stephan Risch — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
13–14 cm. Upperparts bright chestnut-brown, wings and tail with narrow black bars. White supercilium and black-and-white streaked cheeks. Throat white, breast orange-brown to buff; belly and flanks white with dense, fine black bars. Sexes alike.
Confusion species
Bay Wren Cantorchilus nigricapillus has a black crown and plain chestnut underparts without fine barring and lives mainly on the Caribbean slope. Black-bellied Wren Pheugopedius fasciatoventris is larger, with a white throat and breast and a blackish belly. Rufous-breasted Wren Pheugopedius rutilus has a speckled throat and a plain orange-brown breast.
Habitat
Dense undergrowth, vines and Heliconia along streams and rivers in humid lowland and foothill forest, also forest edges, secondary forest and shaded plantations. It forages low to mid-level for insects and spiders.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Pacific slope of south-western Costa Rica and western Panama. Does not occur outside the guide area.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Follow streams and riverbanks in the lowlands of the Osa Peninsula and the surrounding region; the loud duet usually gives the bird away first.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Common within its small range and tolerates secondary forest and forest edges.
Scientific name
Cantorchilus semibadius | (Salvin, 1870)
Salvin described the species in 1870 as Thryothorus semibadius; 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'. semibadius is Latin, from semi- 'half' and badius 'bay, chestnut', after the chestnut upperparts. The specimen the first description was based on came from Bugaba, Chiriquí, Panama.