The rufous-tailed foliage-gleaner is a species of bird in the family Furnariidae. It is found in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela. Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests.
Similar species: Perching Birds
By Thibaud Aronson
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Uploaded Aug 11, 2022. Captured Jun 16, 2022 11:37 in GWC6+X9 La Victoria, Peru.
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On another note, I think furnariids are the only family with names that come close to matching the creativity of hummingbird names. In their case, names don'r refer to their beauty, but rather to the incredible range of ecological niches that members of this very successful family have adopted. We have the foliage-gleaners, the leaftossers, the woodhaunters, the streamcreeper, the thornbirds, the miners, the palmcreeper, the treerunners, and the firewood-gatherer, among many others!
They may not be particularly pretty but in terms of ecological specialization, they're endlessly fascinating. Sort of like the Darwin finches, except with over 300 species!
Borrowing from the eloquent authors over at BOTW:
"With tails and bills adapted to nearly every insectivorous foraging niche, they are denizens of coastal rocks and Andean fell fields, and all forested habitats in between. They run on the ground and along branches, climb tree trunks, and burrow in the ground. The remarkable morphological diversity of the furnariids is paralleled by the greatest diversity of nest types of any bird family and a broad dietary array. Their plumage may be the one aspect that allows some generalization, and an alliterative aid to their recognition may be that the common names of many include the terms rufous, rusty, ruddy, or russet (and many are fulvous or fuscous)". Posted 3 years ago