The Story
I photographed this Tropical Gnatcatcher (Polioptila plumbea) near El Rosario, in the Patía valley of Nariño, Colombia. It is a small, active songbird that eats insects and lives in many kinds of wooded habitat, from dry woodland and scrub to humid forest. In dense forest it keeps to the canopy, but in more open country it comes much lower. Its call is a thin, buzzy gezzz. IUCN lists it as Least Concern. It was formerly considered conspecific with the White-browed and Marañón gnatcatchers.
I used a Canon R5 with the RF 800mm f/11 for this one, at 1/750 sec, f/11, ISO 1600. In 2018, bird monitoring by the Humboldt Institute in the dry forests of Mercaderes, Taminango and El Rosario recorded 80 species.
©2022 Adam Rainoff Photographer
The bird
The Tropical Gnatcatcher (Polioptila plumbea) belongs to the family Polioptilidae (Gnatcatchers) in the eBird/Clements taxonomy.
Source: eBird.org (opens in a new tab)
Conservation
Least Concern on the IUCN Red List (assessment published 2021), with the population trend listed as decreasing. Source: IUCN Red List
