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Sooty-headed Wren | Pheugopedius spadix
Roetkopwinterkoning | Cucarachero cabecigrís
The Sooty-headed Wren is a fairly large wren with a blackish head and throat and a chestnut breast and back. It lives in the undergrowth of humid forest in the foothills and lower mountains. In the guide area it occurs only in eastern Panama.
Voice
Loud, rich whistled phrases repeated rapidly, often as a duet between male and female. Calls include sharp, rattling notes.
Recording: Jaime Suárez — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
14–15 cm. Crown and hindneck sooty grey to blackish, face and throat black with fine white streaks on the cheeks. Back and wings chestnut, tail barred black. Breast warm chestnut, belly duller greyish brown, flanks and undertail coverts barred dark. Bill fairly long and slightly curved. Male and female are alike.
Confusion species
Black-bellied Wren Pheugopedius fasciatoventris has a white throat and breast and a black, white-barred belly, and lives lower down in the lowlands. Rufous-breasted Wren Pheugopedius rutilus has a black-and-white speckled face and an orange-brown breast, but no black throat. Black-throated Wren Pheugopedius atrogularis is very similar but lives on the Caribbean slope of Nicaragua, Costa Rica and western Panama.
Habitat
Dense undergrowth, vine tangles and edges of humid foothill and lower montane forest, also treefall gaps and mature secondary forest. It forages low in vegetation for insects and other invertebrates.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Eastern Panama, mainly in the hills and mountains of Darién. Outside the guide area in western Colombia.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Best found in the hills of Darién in eastern Panama; the birds are often first heard by their loud duet from dense undergrowth.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Fairly common in suitable forest within a limited range; sensitive to deforestation.
Scientific name
Pheugopedius spadix | Bangs, 1910
Bangs described the species in 1910 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Pheugopedius was introduced in 1851 by Cabanis. Pheugopedius is Greek, from pheugō 'to shun, flee' and pedion 'plain, open country': a bird that shuns the open ground. spadix is Greek-Latin for 'date-brown, chestnut', after the dark rufous-brown plumage. The specimen the first description was based on came from Naranjito, Río Dagua, Valle del Cauca, Colombia.