Rufous-breasted wren

Appearance

Adult rufous-breasted wrens are 14 cm long and weigh 16 g. They have grey-brown upperparts and black bars on the tail. The throat and face sides are speckled black and white. The breast is rufous while the belly is brownish white and the flanks brown. They have a faint line over the eye and a short thin bill. The face pattern and rufous breast are the best distinctions from the similarly-sized house wren.

The subspecies ''Pheugopedius rutilus tobagensis'', found on Tobago, is larger and has darker underparts than the nominate subspecies ''P. r. rutilus'' of Trinidad and northern Venezuela. There are five other mainland forms to the west of these.

Distribution

It is found in the tropical New World from Costa Rica and Panama east to Colombia, Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago. It barely reaches into Amazonia in Colombia, being otherwise limited to the northwest part of the northern Andes and neighboring mountain ranges.

Behavior

The rufous-breasted wren's song is a musical whistle of six to ten notes, ''too-see-HEEear-too-see, too-see-HEEear-too-see ''. The contact call is a sharp ''cheep'', given as these skulking birds forage in vegetation for insects and centipedes.

Reproduction

The breeding habitat is forest undergrowth and thickets, also utilizing fragmented forest and secondary growth. The nest is a large sphere of leaves and grass with a side entrance, concealed in tangled vegetation. The female incubates the clutch of two to four brown-blotched white eggs, and the naked young take 16 days to fledge.