Parker's Spinetail

Identification

Parker's spinetail is 13 to 16 cm (5.1 to 6.3 in) long and weighs 16 to 20 g (0.56 to 0.71 oz). The sexes have the same plumage. Adults have a faint buff supercilium and lores on an otherwise dusky gray face. Their crown, back, rump, and uppertail coverts are rufous; the forecrown has narrow buff streaks. Their tail and wings are also rufous. Their throat is white and the rest of their underparts light brown or light brownish gray with indistinct whitish mottling. Their iris is brown or pale brown, their maxilla black, their mandible pale grayish pink, and their legs and feet olive or grayish olive. Juveniles have a duller crown than adults.

Taxonomy

Parker's spinetail was originally described as a species with the binomial Synallaxis vulpecula. Later it was treated as a subspecies of the rusty-backed spinetail (Cranioleuca vulpina) but starting in the late twentieth century it was separated again as a species in its own right. Later phylogenetic work showed that it is not closely related to the rusty-backed spinetail but rather is a sister species of the russet-mantled softtail (C. berlepschi).<p>Parker's spinetail is monotypic.

Scientific name

Cranioleuca vulpecula

Authority

(Sclater, PL & Salvin, 1866)

Order

Passeriformes

Family

Furnariidae

Genus

Cranioleuca

Range and habitat

Parker's spinetail is found along the upper Amazon River and its major tributaries, from eastern Ecuador, northeastern Peru, and far northern Bolivia into western Brazil as far east as the Rio Negro. It almost exclusively inhabits the early-succession vegetation on young river islands. In elevation it is seldom found higher than 300 m (1,000 ft) but does reach 400 m (1,300 ft) in Ecuador.

Migration

Resident species

Behavior

Parker's spinetail is not a migrant, but the extent of its local movements in response to the flooding of river islands during the rainy season is not known.<p>Parker's spinetail feeds on arthropods but details are lacking. It typically forages in the under- and mid-storeys of woody vegetation, and usually in pairs. It gleans its prey from bark, dead leaf clusters, and trapped debris while searching along trunks and limbs.<p>Parker's spinetail is thought to be monogamous. Nothing else is known about its breeding biology.<p>The song of Parker's spinetail is "an accelerating and descending series of nasal notes that ends in a chortle, e.g. tew-tew-tew-tew-trrrrrr" and is similarly described as "an accelerating, rising-falling chatter of nasal notes: teer teew-tew'tu'tutrrr". Its calls include "a sharp, fast chut-chut" given singly or tripled and "a longer, descending chatter, tchew-tew'tu'tu.

Conservation

Population trend

stable