Plain-crowned Spinetail

About the Plain-crowned Spinetail

The plain-crowned spinetail (Synallaxis gujanensis) is a species of bird in the Furnariinae subfamily of the ovenbird family Furnariidae. It is found in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela.

The plain-crowned spinetail was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the wagtails in the genus Motacilla and coined the binomial name Motacilla gujanensis. Gmelin based his description on "Le rouge-queue de la Guyanne" that had been described and illustrated in 1778 by the French polymath, the Comte de Buffon. The specific epithet gujanensis is from the type locality, the Guianas. The plain-crowned spinetail is one of 37 spinetails in the genus Synallaxis that was introduced in 1818 by Louis Pierre Vieillot.

Six subspecies are recognized: S. g. columbiana Chapman, 1914 S. g. gujanensis (Gmelin, JF, 1789) S. g. huallagae Cory, 1919 S. g. canipileus Chapman, 1923 S. g. inornata Pelzeln, 1856 S. g. certhiola Todd, 1916 What are in 2023 the Araguaia spinetail (S. simoni), the white-lored spinetail... Wikipedia →