All species › Passerines › Wrens › White-breasted Wood Wren
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
White-breasted Wood Wren | Henicorhina leucosticta
Witborstboswinterkoning | Chivirín pecho blanco
The White-breasted Wood Wren is a small, stocky wren with a very short, often cocked tail, a white throat and breast and a black-and-white streaked head. It lives on and just above the floor of humid lowland and foothill forest and is heard more often than seen.
Voice
A loud, rich song of short, clear whistled phrases often repeated three or four times, frequently in duet. Calls a sharp, dry tick and a harsh rattle.
Recording: Juan Freile — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
10–11 cm. Tail very short, usually held cocked. Crown blackish to dark brown, white supercilium, cheeks streaked black and white. Throat and breast clean white, flanks and lower belly warm brown. Back and rump chestnut-brown, wings with narrow black bars. Legs fairly long. Sexes alike.
Confusion species
Grey-breasted Wood Wren Henicorhina leucophrys has a grey breast and lives higher, in montane forest; where both occur they are largely separated by elevation. The nightingale-wrens Microcerculus lack the streaked head and have scaly underparts. Song Wren Cyphorhinus phaeocephalus is larger and has a rufous throat and breast.
Habitat
Floor and understorey of humid evergreen lowland and foothill forest, also mature secondary forest and humid parts of seasonal forest, from the lowlands into the lower mountains. It forages on the ground and in dense undergrowth for insects and spiders.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
From eastern and southern Mexico, including the southern Yucatán Peninsula, through Central America to Panama. Outside the guide area in north-western and northern South America.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Listen in the undergrowth of humid forest for the loud whistled phrases and dry ticks; standing still often brings the bird in close to investigate.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Widespread and common in forest with dense undergrowth; disappears where forest is cleared entirely.
Scientific name
Henicorhina leucosticta | (Cabanis, 1847)
Cabanis described the species in 1847 as Cyphorhinus leucosticta; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Henicorhina was introduced in 1868 by Sclater & Salvin. Henicorhina is Greek, from henikos 'singular, unique' and rhis, rhinos 'nostrils'; a replacement name for the preoccupied Heterorhina ('different nostrils'). leucosticta is Greek for 'white-speckled', from leukos 'white' and stiktos 'spotted', after the black-and-white streaked head and neck. The specimen the first description was based on came from Guiana (not further specified).