Marañón Spinetail

The Maranon spinetail is 14 to 16 cm (5.5 to 6.3 in) long and weighs 16 to 17 g (0.56 to 0.60 oz). The sexes have the same plumage. Adults have a dark brownish-gray face and forehead. Their crown and upper back are dark grayish brown that becomes more rufescent brown by the rump and uppertail coverts. Their wings are dark rufous with dark fuscous tips on the flight feathers. Their tail is dark rufous; it is graduated, and the feathers have blunt tips. Their throat is pale grayish, their breast darker brownish gray, their belly a lighter brownish gray, and their flanks gray with an olive tinge. Their iris is brown, their maxilla black to dark gray, their mandible blue-gray, and their legs and feet gray to olive. Juveniles have faint dark scallops on the breast and belly and a pinkish-yellow mandible.

The Maranon spinetail is found in the valley of the Marañón River from far southeastern Ecuador's Zamora-Chinchipe Province south into the northern parts of Peru's departments of Cajamarca and Amazonas. It inhabits the undergrowth of semihumid gallery forest, secondary forest, and deciduous woodlands along rivers, and occurs less often at the edges of humid forest. In elevation it ranges between 650 and 1,200 m (2,100 and 3,900 ft) in Ecuador and 450 and 1,850 m (1,500 and 6,100 ft) in Peru.

The Maranon spinetail feeds on arthropods. It usually forages in pairs, gleaning its prey from the ground, foliage, and small branches up to about 2 m (7 ft) above the ground.