Strong-billed Woodcreeper

The strong-billed woodcreeper one of the largest members of the ovenbird family and is the heaviest woodcreeper, though the slender long-billed woodcreeper (Nasica longirostris) is longer and the great rufous woodcreeper (Xiphocolaptes major) is larger overall. The strong-billed is 28 to 31.5 cm (11 to 12 in) long. Weights range between 103 and 144 g (3.6 and 5.1 oz). The sexes have the same plumage. Adults of the nominate subspecies X. p. promeropirhynchus have a dark brown crown and nape with buff streaks. Most of the rest of their face is dusky, with buffy lores, supercilium, "moustache", and throat stripe. Their back, scapulars, and wing coverts are brown with faint buff streaks on the shoulder. Their lower back is russet that darkens to the rufous chestnut rump. The tail is dark chestnut with paler feather shafts. Their flight feathers are tawny brown with dusky tips and rufous chestnut inner webs. Their throat is plain buffy. Their breast and flanks are brownish and their belly and undertail coverts are tawny cinnamon with small dark spots or bars. The breast and belly have narrow buffy streaks. Their bill is long, stout, and somewhat decurved; its color ranges from gray to black. Their iris is dark brown, amber, or red and their legs and feet bluish gray, green, or grayish black. …

The subspecies of the strong-billed woodcreeper are found thus:

The strong-billed woodcreeper inhabits a very wide variety of temperate, subtropical, and tropical forested landscapes. It favors the interior of primary forest and also occurs at its edges, in semi-open forest, and in mature secondary forest. It mostly shuns fragmented forests, plantations, and young secondary forest. The subspecies found in Middle America occur in montane forest, principally oak and pine-oak associations, but also in lowland rainforest and pine-dominated ridges. The subspecies of the Amazon Basin inhabit humid forest, principally terra firme and várzea and only rarely gallery and permanently flooded forest. The remaining subspecies in the northern and central Andes, the coast ranges, and the tepuis inhabit humid evergreen forest, cloudforest, and also dryer forest. In elevation the species as a whole ranges from sea level to 3,500 m (11,500 ft). …

The strong-billed woodcreeper feeds mostly on arthropods but its diet also includes small vertebrates. It sometimes follows army ant swarms, where it forages on the ground or on low trunks to capture prey disturbed by the ants. Away from ant swarms it forages as high as the subcanopy. It creeps up trunks and along limbs and probes foliage, bark, dead wood, leaf litter, bromeliads, and epiphytes; it less often sallies out to glean from foliage. It typically forages singly or in pairs; sources differ about how frequently it joins mixed-species feeding flocks, stating variously from seldom to often.