Tag Archives: Scytalopus

How many tapaculos of the genus Scytalopus are there?

Well, many – according to a new study (which apparently took about 40 years in the making!!!).

The tapaculos of the genus Scytalopus are troughout small, mostly greyish colored, inconspicuous birds with poor flight abilities that inhabit the dense undergrowth of the Andean forests of southwestern South America (some species occur more northerly).

The Magellanic Tapaculo (Scytalopus magellanicus (J. F. Gmelin)) (see depiction below) is one of them, and is a part of a complex that shares its name, the Scytalopus [magellanicus] complex, which again includes several species, some of which have been discovered and described only recently.

Magellanic Tapaculo (Scytalopus magellanicus)

Depiction from: ‘Richard Crawshay: The birds of Tierra del Fuego. London: B. Quaritch 1907’

(public domain)

Yet, this complex has gotten even richer in species, with the description of three completely new ones, split from others: the Jalca Tapaculo (Scytalopus frankeae), the White-winged Tapaculo (Scytalopus krabbei), and the Ampay Tapaculo (Scytalopus whitneyi), as well as one subspecies (itself only described in 2010) being elevated to species rank, the Eastern Paramo Tapaculo (Scytalopus androstictus). [1]

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References:

[1] Niels K. Krabbe; Thomas S. Schulenberg; Peter A. Hosner; Kenneth V. Rosenberg; Tristan J. Davis; Gary H. Rosenberg; Daniel F. Lane; Michael J. Andersen; Mark B. Robbins; Carlos Daniel Cadena; Thomas Valqui; Jessie F. Salter; Andrew J. Spencer; Fernando Angulo; Jon Fjeldså: Untangling cryptic diversity in the High Andes: Revision of the Scytalopus [magellanicus] complex (Rhinocryptidae) in Peru reveals three new species. The Auk 137: 1-26. 2020

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edited: 26.02.2020

Eleven steps to draw a bird

Hi there!

It’s coffee/tea time, whatever you prefer … and it’s dark outside, and thus it’s dark inside too.  

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I have decided to make another >step by step<, or >how to do<, or whatever you may call it series, of how I draw a bird, this time it is another extinct one, yet only known from two of its bones, so the coloration is just imagined.  

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1: a sketch is made

2: the sketch is fixed with the pencil 

3: the sketch is finished, the surroundings are included

4: the rubber color is put on the bird

5: the rubber color has dried, the background is created with water color and a sponge

6: the background has dried, the rubber color is rubbed away

7: the actual coloring begins, I use my loved watercolor pencils

8/9: the watercolor is blurred with a brush and with water

10: the water has dried, the details are now worked out using the watercolor pencils again

11: the most important step, probably; the last details are worked out with a pencil, and the white dot is placed inside the eye 

The end result is a drawing of a Cuban Tapaculo (Scytalopus sp.)  

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References:

[1] Storrs L. Olson; Evgeny N. Kurochkin: Fossil evidence of a tapaculo in the Quaternary of Cuba (Aves: Passeriformes: Scytalopodidae). Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington 100(2): 353-357. 1987

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edited: 09.11.2017