Piauhau de Weber

Identification

Overall the chestnut-capped piha is a dark grey bird with a notable chestnut crown on the upper nape and pale cinnamon-colored undertail coverts. The upperparts and wing coverts are a dark grey with paler fringes to most of the feathers. The flight feathers are a dark brownish grey with cinnamon-colored fringes on the secondaries and tertials. As the bird's feathers wear, the pale fringes tend to darken, leaving the bird even more uniform grey in coloration. The underwing is a pale silvery grey. The underparts are a paler shade of grey than the upperparts, particularly on the throat. The tail is a dark greyish-brown, and is noticeably long and forked. The legs and feet are also dark grey, although they have contrasting yellow soles. In addition to its namesake chestnut crown, the bird's head is marked by a dark brown iris and a narrow orbital ring that is a bright yellow. The bird's beak is black and relatively deep and broad at its base, and has a very hooked tip. It also has short rictal bristles and obvious nostrils. Adult chestnut-capped pihas are small for pihas, measuring about 20 to 25 cm (8 to 10 in) long and weighing between 69.4 and 72.2 g (2.45 and 2.55 oz).<p>The sexes are similar in appearance, although the male is suspected to be slightly larger than the female. Males also have slightly different primary feathers where the barbules are elongated and stiff, allowing the males to create a whirring noise with their wings. Molting appears to occur around August, with males molting earlier than females.<p>Juveniles have a far less obvious chestnut crown than the adults, but have brighter and broader rufous fringes on their secondaries and tertials. Their irises are also a greyer shade of dark brown. Juvenile males also have not yet developed the modified primary feathers of the adult.<p>While no other pihas have been found to share the chestnut-capped piha's habitat, making it unlikely to be confused with another species, it is distinguished from the closely related dusky piha by its relatively smaller size, greyer plumage, distinctive chestnut crown, and yellow orbital ring.<p>Like most pihas, the chestnut-capped piha is extremely and conspicuously vocal. Its call is a loud, piercing sreeck which rises in pitch before abruptly descending. These calls are given repetitively in a series at one-second intervals, although when agitated they can be given every third of a second, and can be heard over 100 m (330 ft) away. The chestnut-capped piha calls sporadically throughout the day and year-round. The species also produces a quiet, nasal gluck-gluck which is believed to be a contact call.

Taxonomie

During the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the area infrastructure led many ornithological expeditions to explore the northern Cordillera Central mountains; however, the northern premontane slopes remained largely unexplored before political instability closed off the area until the 1990s. On March 31, 1999, during survey work to compile an inventory of the avifauna of the La Forsoza region, the first known chestnut-capped piha was captured, photographed, and released by ornithologists Andrés M. Cuervo, José M. Ochoa, Sandra Galeano, and Juan Carlos Luna. Following the capture of a second bird in May, Cuervo began to speculate that the unusual pihas were an undescribed species. In August 1999 a rapid survey across a wide swathe of the region encountered the unknown piha on numerous occasions, and in some areas it was one of the more common species present. Two birds which were mistnetted during this survey were collected and became the holotype and paratype when the species was described in 2001. The species' discovery led to hopes that more undescribed species existed in this portion of Colombia will be discovered; since the newly discovered bird species from central Colombia that includes the Magdalena tapaculo, Stiles's tapaculo, Antioquia brushfinch, and Antioquia wren.<p>The chestnut-capped piha is also known as the chestnut-capped cotinga and Antioquia piha. Locals call the species Arrierito Antioqueño, which translates to the "little herdsman of Antioquia," because its call reminds them of the whistles made by horsemen herding cattle. The genus name Lipaugus comes from the Greek lipaugēs, meaning "dark" or "devoid of light." The specific name weberi is in honor of Walter H. Weber, a Colombian ornithologist from Medellín known for promoting conservation and the study of birds in Antioquia. The chestnut-capped piha has no subspecies, and seems to be most closely related to the dusky piha. It may form a superspecies with the dusky, cinnamon-vented, and scimitar-winged pihas.

Nom scientifique

Lipaugus weberi

Autorité

Cuervo, Salaman, Donegan & Ochoa, 2001

Ordre

Passériformes

Famille

Cotingidés

Genre

Lipaugus

Répartition et habitat

The chestnut-capped piha is endemic to the central Andes of Colombia. It is only found on the northern slope of the Cordillera Central mountains near the towns of Amalfi and Anorí in the department of Antioquia. Sixteen distinct populations are known from this area just east of the Nechí River Valley, with most of the populations being located closer to Anorí, likely due to more extensive habitat destruction over a longer period of time near Amalfi. Despite the large number of populations, in 2014 it was estimated that its surviving habitat only covered between 42 and 357.5 km2 (10,400 and 88,300 acres).<p>The species is limited to living in a very narrow band of extremely humid, premontane cloud forest between 1,400 and 1,925 m (4,600 and 6,300 ft) in elevation, although it is suspected that birds may venture as low as 1,200 m (3,900 ft). This piha seems to be most common between 1,600 and 1,750 m (5,200 and 5,700 ft). The cloud forest is dominated by trees in the genera Guarea, Pouteria, Protium, Roucheria, Vochysia, Virola, and Clusia. The species prefers pristine cloud forest, and may need blocks of at least 30 ha (74 acres) of habitat to thrive; however, it may be able to tolerate some selective logging and habitat fragmentation, although as a lower population density. The chestnut-capped piha is non-migratory.

Migration

Espèce sédentaire

Comportement

Mode de migration: Espèce sédentaire.

Conservation

Tendance de la population: en déclin.

Tendance de la population

en déclin