All species › Passerines › Tyrant flycatchers and allies › Rufous Mourner
Position in the tree Birds Aves › Birds with a flexible palate Neognathae › All other modern birds Neoaves › Landbirds Telluraves › Falcons, parrots and passerines Australaves › Falcons and passerines Eufalconimorphae › Parrots and passerines Psittacopasserae
Rufous Mourner | Rhytipterna holerythra
Rosse treurtiran | Plañidera alazán
The Rufous Mourner is a uniformly rufous-brown tyrant flycatcher of the middle levels of humid lowland and foothill forest. It sits still for long periods and is noticed mainly by its slow, plaintive whistles. In the guide area it lives from south-eastern Mexico to Panama.
Voice
A slow, plaintive, whistled phrase of two or three notes, roughly whee-oo, whee-oo-wheet, repeated after long pauses. Also a short, rather hoarse call.
Recording: Michael Castaño — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
20 cm, slender, with a rounded head, large dark eyes and a fairly narrow dark bill with a slightly hooked tip. Upperparts uniform warm rufous-brown, wings and tail slightly darker. Underparts paler, cinnamon, especially on the throat and belly. No wing-bars or spots. Male and female are alike.
Confusion species
Rufous Piha Lipaugus unirufus is very similar but larger and bulkier, with a slightly paler throat and a loud, explosive call. Cinnamon Becard Pachyramphus cinnamomeus is smaller, with dark lores, a pale line above them and a thicker bill. Speckled Mourner Laniocera rufescens has rows of cinnamon spots on the wing-coverts. Bright-rumped Attila Attila spadiceus has a pale yellow rump, a heavy hooked bill and often a streaked breast.
Habitat
Middle levels and lower canopy of humid evergreen lowland and foothill forest, also mature secondary forest and forest edges, from the lowlands to about 1200 m. It eats large insects and fruit, taken from leaves and twigs with short sallies. It sometimes joins mixed flocks.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
South-eastern Mexico through Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and Nicaragua, mainly on the Caribbean slope, to Costa Rica and Panama, where it occurs on both slopes. Outside the guide area in western and northern Colombia and north-western Ecuador.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Best found by its slow, whistled song in extensive forest; then search the middle levels for a motionless, uniformly rufous-brown bird. It is regularly seen along Pipeline Road (Camino del Oleoducto) in Panama.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Fairly common in extensive humid forest; sensitive to deforestation but also persists in mature secondary forest.
Scientific name
Rhytipterna holerythra | (Sclater & Salvin, 1860)
Sclater & Salvin described the species in 1860 as Lipaugus holerythrus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Rhytipterna was introduced in 1850 by Reichenbach. Rhytipterna is Greek, from rhutis 'wrinkle' and pterna 'heel', after the corrugations Reichenbach depicted on the rear of the tarsus. holerythra is Greek, from holos 'entire' and eruthros 'red': 'wholly red', after the uniformly rufous plumage. The specimen the first description was based on came from Choctum, Alta Verapaz, Guatemala.