Black-striped Woodcreeper

The black-striped woodcreeper is 21.5 to 25 cm (8.5 to 9.8 in) long and weighs 51 to 66 g (1.8 to 2.3 oz). It is a medium-sized member of genus Xiphorhynchus, with a longish, nearly straight, bill with a slight droop at the tip. The sexes have the same plumage. Adults of the nominate subspecies have a brownish black face with buff streaks and no distinct supercilium. Their crown and nape are brownish black with buffy teardrop spots and wide streaks. Their back and scapulars are also brownish black with wider and deeper buff streaks. Their lower back, rump, and wings are dark cinnamon-rufous, with dusky tips on the outer primaries. Their inner wing coverts are also dark cinnamon-rufous and the outer coverts browish black with paler streaks. Their tail is rufous-chestnut. Their throat is pale to deep buff with a thin black lower edge. Their breast and belly are pale buff with a scaly appearance on the former and streaks on the latter. Their sides and flanks are grayish brown with faint streaks, their undertail coverts brownish with pale buff streaks, and their underwing coverts deep ochraceous buff to tawny buff. Their iris is dark reddish brown to dark brown, their maxilla dark brown to black, their mandible silver-gray to bluish white, and their legs and feet green to bluish gray or dark gray. …

The nominate subspecies of the black-striped woodcreeper is found on the Caribbean slope from eastern Nicaragua through Costa Rica and Panama, and also on the Pacific slope from the Canal Zone through western Colombia into Ecuador as far as Pichincha Province. Subspecies X. l. eximius is found on the Pacific slope of southwestern Costa Rica and western Panama. X. l. alarum is found in Colombia, from the valleys of the Sinú, Cauca, and Magdalena rivers east into Santander Department. The black-striped woodcreeper mostly inhabits humid lowland forest. It favors evergreen forest but also entends into mangroves in some areas. It also favors the interior of tall mature forest but is regular at its edges and gaps, in older secondary forest, and occasionally in tree plantations. In elevation it mostly ranges between sea level and 1,000 m (3,300 ft) but reaches 1,200 m (3,900 ft) in Costa Rica and 1,500 m (4,900 ft) in Colombia.

The black-striped woodcreeper's diet is mostly arthropods but also includes small vertebrates such as lizards. It usually forages singly, though sometimes in pairs or more rarely in family groups. It will join mixed-species feeding flocks but does so less than other Xiphorhynchus woodcreepers. With flocks it usually feeds in the forest canopy and somewhat lower when away from them. It hitches up trunks and along branches, usually in a spiral but also creeping along large limbs. Most prey is taken by probing bark crevices, vine tangles, dead leaf clusters, bromeliads, and epiphytes. It also sometimes sallies for flying prey. It regularly follows army ant swarms, staying fairly low and usually capturing prey directly from leaves, trunks, and vines and seldom if ever from the ground.