Arañero de Whitehead

Identificación

The species is a large, distinctive spiderhunter, with males having a length of 16.5–18 cm (6.5–7.1 in) and females having a length of 15.5–16.5 cm (6.1–6.5 in). It is mainly brown with profuse streaking on the head and body, buffy white streaking on the top of the head, narrow white streaks on the neck and back, fine brownish-white streaking on the throat, and broad white streaking on the rest of the underparts. The vent and uppertail coverts are bright yellow. The iris is brown, while the legs and bill are black. Both sexes look similar, while the juvenile plumage is unknown.<p>Whitehead's spiderhunters have very distinctive vocalisations, with a high-pitched, squeaky song. Their calls include a wheezy wee-chit, with the first note rising and second note falling in pitch, a complex series of nasal and wheezy wit-wit-wit-wt’wt’wt’weehee twitters and trills, and a teeh-teeh-wee, with the wee rising in pitch. Other calls are a see-wee see-wee, a swee-eee-eee, a tee-tee-swee-ee, prolonged twittering, and loud shrieks made in flight or while perched.

Taxonomía

In 1887, the British ornithologist Richard Bowdler Sharpe described Whitehead's spiderhunter as Arachnothera juliae on the basis of specimens collected from Mount Kinabalu, Borneo by the British explorer John Whitehead. The name of the genus is from the Ancient Greek arakhnēs, meaning spider, and thēras, meaning hunter. The specific name is in honour of Julia Charlotte Sophia, the wife of the Scottish ornithologist Arthur Hay. Whitehead's spiderhunter is the official common name designated by the International Ornithologists' Union and is in honour of Whitehead.<p>Whitehead's spiderhunter is one of 147 species in the sunbird and spiderhunter family Nectariniidae. Within the family, it is one of 13 species in the spiderhunter genus Arachnothera. A 2011 phylogenetic study by the ornithologist Robert Moyle and colleagues found Whitehead's spiderhunter to be most closely related to a clade (a group of all the descendants of a common ancestor) formed by the yellow-eared and naked-faced spiderhunters.

Nombre científico

Arachnothera juliae

Autoridad

Sharpe, 1887

Orden

Passeriformes

Familia

Nectariniidae

Género

Arachnothera

Distribución y hábitat

Endemic to Borneo, Whitehead's spiderhunter is found in mountain ranges in the north-central part of the island, from Mount Kinabalu to the Dulit Range and Kayan Mentarang. It inhabits hill dipterocarp forest, primary and secondary montane forest, and forest edge at elevations of 930–3,000 m (3,050–9,840 ft).

Migración

Especie residente

Comportamiento

Patrón migratorio: Especie residente.

Conservación

Tendencia poblacional: en declive.

Tendencia poblacional

en declive