White-striped Woodcreeper

Identification

The white-striped woodcreeper is 21.5 to 23.5 cm (8.5 to 9.3 in) long and weighs 30 to 40 g (1.1 to 1.4 oz). It is a slim, medium-sized woodcreeper with a long, slender, decurved bill. The sexes have the same plumage. Adults of the nominate subspecies have a mostly pale face that often has dusky streaks or smudges. They have white to buff-white ear coverts, supercilium, and eyering with a blackish or dusky stripe behind the eye. Their crown, nape, and sides of the neck are blackish to dark brown. Their forehead has buffy to whitish buff spots that become streaks on the crown and nape and usually extend onto the back. Their back and wing coverts are olive-brown or tawny. Their flight feathers, rump, and tail are cinnamon-rufous to rufous-chestnut. Their flight feathers have brownish bases and their primaries have dusky tips. Their throat and breast are white to creamy white; the throat is unmarked and the breast has a blackish scaly appearance. The rest of their underparts are dusky gray with white streaks that fade to the belly. Their underwing coverts are ochraceous buff. Their iris is brown, their maxilla dark brown or blackish, their mandible whitish gray to pinkish, and their legs and feet gray to blackish. Juveniles have more olive-brown upperparts than adults, their underparts' markings are less regular, and their bill is shorter. Subspecies L. l. umbrosus is smaller than the nominate, with whiter spots and streaks on the head and whiter underparts with blacker streaks.

Taxonomy

The white-striped woodcreeper has two subspecies, the nominate L. l. leucogaster (Swainson, 1827) and L. l. umbrosus (Moore, RT, 1934).

Scientific name

Lepidocolaptes leucogaster

Authority

(Swainson, 1827)

Order

Passeriformes

Family

Furnariidae

Genus

Lepidocolaptes

Range and habitat

The white-striped woodcreeper occurs only in Mexico. Subspecies L. l. umbrosus is found in northwestern Mexico from Sonora and Chihuahua south to Durango, Nayarit, and Jalisco. The nominate L. l. leucogaster is found in western and southern Mexico. On the Pacific side and interior it occurs from Jalisco and Zacatecas south to Oaxaca, and on the Caribbean side from Veracruz south to Oaxaca. The species mostly inhabits humid montane forest and drier oak, pine-oak, and pine-fir forest in the subtropical and temperate zones. It also occurs in lowland tropical deciduous forest and, at higher elevations, mixed coniferous forest. It favors mature forest but occasionally occurs in secondary forest. In elevation it mostly ranges from 900 to 3,500 m (3,000 to 11,500 ft) but has been recorded as low as 400 m (1,300 ft) and as high as 4,000 m (13,000 ft).

Migration

Resident species

Behavior

Migration pattern: Resident species.

Conservation

Population trend: declining.

Population trend

declining