White-browed Tit-Spinetail Leptasthenura xenothorax

The White-browed Tit-Spinetail is a highly arboreal, small-bodied but medium-sized, dark furnariid, with a long, dark and strongly graduated tail. The species has an extremely narrow geographic range, found only at a small number of sites in south-central Peru. It is restricted to highly fragmented high-Andean Polylepis woodlands, and demonstrates a high degree of forest patch specialisation, preferring less disturbed areas of woodland. Highly vocal, it is most often found foraging acrobatically on the outer-most branches of Polylepis trees, either as pairs or groups, which regularly follow mixed species flocks. The species is currently listed as Endangered due to ongoing anthropogenic threats to Polylepis woodlands throughout its extremely limited distribution. Dispersal studies are urgently required to determine how this and other Polylepis specialists are able to persist in their threatened and highly fragmented high-Andean landscape.

White-browed Tit-Spinetail photo © Fabrice Schmitt