Dusky Antbird

The dusky antbird is 13 to 15 cm (5.1 to 5.9 in) long and weighs 15 to 19 g (0.53 to 0.67 oz). Males of the nominate subspecies C. t. tyrannina are mostly slate gray; their wings and tail are darker and their underparts lighter. They have a white patch between their scapulars and narrow white tips on their wing coverts and outer tail feathers. Their posterior underparts have a clay-colored tinge. Females have a tawny-tinged dark olive-gray crown, upperparts, and wings. They have a very small white interscapular patch. Their wing coverts have cinnamon edges. Their tail is dark grayish brown. Their supercilium, throat, and underparts are tawny-buff with an olive tinge to their flanks. Males of subspecies C. t. crepera are blacker than nominate males and have smaller white tips on their wing coverts and tail. Females have more rufescent wings than the nominate. C. t. vicina males have brownish olive wings, tail, and flanks. C. t. saturatior males are blacker than the nominate; they have white tips on the feathers of the crissum and usually white tips on some of the breast feathers. Females have grayer upperparts than the nominate. Adults of both sexes of all subspecies have a rich chocolate-brown iris.

The subspecies of the dusky antbird are found thus:

C. t. crepera: from Veracruz and Oaxaca in southern Mexico south through Belize, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica into Panama as far as northwestern Veraguas Province C. t. tyrannina: Panama from eastern Chiriquí Province to Colombia; in Colombia the Pacific slope, lower Cauca and Magdalena river valleys, and the Central and Eastern Andes; in western Ecuador south to Guayas Province; in southern Venezuela Bolívar and Amazonas states; and in far northwestern Brazil northern Amazonas state C. t. vicina: eastern and western Andes of northwestern Venezuela and the east slope of Colombia's Eastern Andes C. t. saturatior: from southern and eastern Bolívar in Venezuela east through the Guianas and northeastern Brazil north of the Amazon to the Atlantic in Amapá The dusky antbird inhabits the understorey of evergreen forest, where it overwhelmingly favors the forest edges and clearings and the edges of watercourses. It also occurs in secondary forest but only that bordering taller forest and having a dense understorey. In elevation it ranges as high as 1,250 m (4,100 ft) in Central America, 2,000 m (6,600 ft) in Colombia, to 1,800 m (5,900 ft) in Venezuela though mostly below 1,200 m (3,900 ft), to 1,200 m (3,900 ft) in Brazil, and locally to 1,400 m (4,600 ft) in Ecuador though mostly below 800 m (2,600 ft).

The dusky antbird feeds on a wide variety of insects and spiders. Single birds, pairs, and family groups usually forage on the ground and within about 5 m (16 ft) of it. It typically hops through dense vegetation, taking prey from vegetation by gleaning, reaching, lunging, and making short fluttery flights from a perch. It rarely, and only briefly, joins mixed-species feeding flocks. In Panama it regularly attends army ant swarms, usually for a fairly short time.