Bay hornero
The bay hornero or pale-billed hornero is a species of bird in the Furnariinae subfamily of the ovenbird family Furnariidae. It is found in Brazil, Colombia, Peru, and possibly Ecuador.
Taxonomy and systematics
The bay hornero was originally described as a species but some early 20th century authors treated it as a subspecies of the pale-legged hornero. Since the 1930s most taxonomists have again treated it as a species and early 2010s genetic data confirmed that treatment. However, even as late as 1973 one author considered it a color morph of the pale-legged.The bay hornero is monotypic.
Description
The bay hornero is long and weighs about. It is a stout hornero with a long and nearly straight bill. The sexes' plumages are alike. Adults have a dull buffy white supercilium. Their crown and nape are grayish brown. Their back, rump, uppertail and wing coverts, and tail are chestnut brown. Most of their wing is also chestnut brown, with a small area of pale rufous on the inner primaries. Their throat is white with dark tawny brown sides. Their breast is dark tawny brown, their flanks buffy brown, their belly whitish, and their undertail coverts dusky with chestnut brown tips. Their iris is brown or reddish brown, their maxilla light horn brown with a darker base and culmen, their mandible whitish, cream, or pinkish gray, and their legs and feet cream or very light pink.Distribution and habitat
The bay hornero is found in the western Amazon Basin along the rios Huallaga, Ucayali, and Napo in Peru, and through extreme southern Colombia and western Brazil along the upper Amazon. A sight record in Ecuador leads the South American Classification Committee of the American Ornithological Society to call it hypothetical in that country.The bay hornero primarily inhabits middle-aged river islands that undergo annual flooding, typically in stands of Cecropia. It also occurs on older islands and in várzea forest along the rivers. In Colombia most of the few records are grassy islands.