Bar-bellied woodcreeper facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Bar-bellied woodcreeper |
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Hylexetastes
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stresemanni
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The bar-bellied woodcreeper (Hylexetastes stresemanni) is a cool bird found in parts of South America. It lives in countries like Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. This bird is a type of woodcreeper, which belongs to the ovenbird family called Furnariidae.
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About the Bar-bellied Woodcreeper
The bar-bellied woodcreeper is one of the biggest birds in its group. It has a strong body, a short tail, and a thick, short beak. These birds are about 28 to 30 cm (11 to 12 in) long. Male woodcreepers weigh around 114 to 125 g (4.0 to 4.4 oz), while females are a bit lighter, weighing about 100 g (3.5 oz). Both male and female birds look very similar.
What They Look Like
Adult bar-bellied woodcreepers have brown or olive-brown feathers on their head, upper back, and wings. They have light streaks on their forehead. Their face is mostly plain, except for lighter spots near their eyes. Their lower back, wings, and tail are a reddish-brown color. The tips of their main wing feathers are darker.
Their throat is whitish with dark streaks. Their upper chest is olive with light streaks that have black edges. The lower chest is plain olive, and their belly and under-tail feathers are olive with thin black bars. Their eyes are reddish-brown, their beak is dark reddish-brown, and their legs and feet are grayish-green.
Young bar-bellied woodcreepers have a more reddish back than adults. Their throat and chest have a mix of streaks and bars, and their beak is more brownish.
Different Types of Bar-bellied Woodcreepers
There are three main types, or subspecies, of the bar-bellied woodcreeper. They have small differences in their colors:
- H. s. stresemanni: This is the main type, described above.
- H. s. insignis: This type is more olive-colored on its upper parts. It doesn't have streaks on its forehead or black on its chest streaks. It also has a light stripe near its beak and weaker bars on its belly.
- H. s. undulatus: This type is larger than the main one. It also doesn't have forehead streaks. Its underparts are slightly more olive and less reddish, and the bars on its belly are bolder.
Where They Live
The bar-bellied woodcreeper lives in different parts of the Amazon rainforest.
- The H. s. insignis subspecies lives in a small area in the far northwestern part of Brazil and the southeastern part of Colombia.
- The main H. s. stresemanni subspecies is found in the northwestern Amazon Basin of Brazil, between the Rio Negro and the upper Amazon River. It also goes a little into eastern Ecuador.
- The H. s. undulatus subspecies lives in the southwestern Amazon, south of the Amazon River. This includes eastern Peru, northern Bolivia, and Brazil, reaching at least to the Rio Purus and possibly to the Rio Madeira.
Their Home Environment
These birds live in humid lowland forests. In Colombia, they seem to prefer "terra firme" forests, which are higher and don't flood. But in other places, they also live in floodplain forests. They like the inside of old, untouched forests, but they might also be found at the edges of these forests or in older secondary forests (forests that have grown back after being disturbed). They usually live at elevations up to about 300 m (980 ft) above sea level.
How They Behave
Staying in One Place
The bar-bellied woodcreeper stays in its home area all year round. It does not migrate.
What They Eat
Scientists don't know a lot about what the bar-bellied woodcreeper eats or how it finds food. They think it often follows army ant swarms, eating insects that the ants stir up. Sometimes, it might join groups of different bird species that are feeding together.
It seems to catch its food by flying out from a vertical perch, like a tree trunk. When it's following ant swarms, it stays fairly low to the ground. In other areas, it might hunt higher up in the trees. It is known to eat small insects and probably eats larger arthropods too, like spiders or other bugs.
Singing Their Song
The bar-bellied woodcreeper sings mostly when the sun first comes up. Its song is described as "a loud and somewhat shrill series of 4–6 almost disyllabic 'shu-reeet' whistles roughly on same pitch."
Raising Families
Not much is known about how the bar-bellied woodcreeper raises its young.
Their Conservation Status
The IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) has listed the bar-bellied woodcreeper as a species of "Least Concern." This means they are not currently in danger of disappearing.
Even though they have a very large area where they live, their total number of birds is not known, and it is thought to be going down. There are no immediate big threats identified for them. They are probably uncommon or rare, but they live in a part of the Amazon that is still very wild and not well-studied by bird experts.
Scientists believe these birds are very sensitive to human activity and changes to their habitat. Some think their conservation status should be looked at again, and they might even be considered "Near-threatened" or "Vulnerable" in the future.
