The Chilean seaside cinclodes or simply seaside cinclodesClements, J. F., T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, T. A. Fredericks, J. A. Gerbracht, D. Lepage, S. M. Billerman, B. L. Sullivan, and C. L. Wood. 2022. The eBird/Clements checklist of birds of the world: v2022. Downloaded from https://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/ retrieved November 10, 2022 (''Cinclodes nigrofumosus'') is a species of

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class (biology), class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the Oviparity, laying of Eggshell, hard-shelled eggs, a high Metabolism, metabolic rate, a fou ...

in the Furnariinae subfamily of the ovenbird

family Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...

Furnariidae. It is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also foun ...

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes, Andes Mountains and the Paci ...

Taxonomy and systematics

The Chilean seaside cinclodes and the Peruvian seaside cinclodes (''C. taczanowskii'') have on and off been considered separate species and

conspecific Biological specificity is the tendency of a characteristic such as a behavior or a biochemical variation to occur in a particular species. Biochemist Linus Pauling stated that "Biological specificity is the set of characteristics of living organism ...

.Remsen, J. V., Jr., J. I. Areta, E. Bonaccorso, S. Claramunt, G. Del-Rio, A. Jaramillo, D. F. Lane, M. B. Robbins, F. G. Stiles, and K. J. Zimmer. Version 31 May 2023. A classification of the bird species of South America. American Ornithological Society. https://www.museum.lsu.edu/~Remsen/SACCBaseline.htm retrieved May 31, 2023 Studies in the twenty-first century show that they are very weakly differentiated genetically. As of 2023 they are treated as

sister species In phylogenetics, a sister group or sister taxon, also called an adelphotaxon, comprises the closest relative(s) of another given unit in an evolutionary tree. Definition The expression is most easily illustrated by a cladogram: Taxon A and ...

, and the two are sister to the

dark-bellied cinclodes The dark-bellied cinclodes (''Cinclodes patagonicus'') is a species of bird in the Furnariinae subfamily of the ovenbird family Furnariidae. It is found in Argentina and Chile. Taxonomy and systematics The dark-bellied cinclodes was formall ...

(''C. patagonicus'').Derryberry, E. P., S. Claramunt, G. Derryberry, R. T. Chesser, J. Cracraft, A. Aleixo, J. Pérez-Emán, J. V. Remsen, Jr., and R. T. Brumfield. (2011). Lineage diversification and morphological evolution in a large-scale continental radiation: the Neotropical ovenbirds and woodcreepers (Aves: Furnariidae). Evolution 65(10):2973–2986. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1558-5646.2011.01374.x The South American Classification Committee of the

American Ornithological Society The American Ornithological Society (AOS) is an ornithological organization based in the United States. The society was formed in October 2016 by the merger of the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) and the Cooper Ornithological Society. Its ...

is seeking a proposal to consider merging them. The Chilean seaside cinclodes is

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unisp ...

Description

The Chilean seaside cinclodes is long and weighs . It is a large cinclodes with a straight bill. The sexes have the same plumages. Adults have narrow pale buff or whitish

supercilium The supercilium is a plumage feature found on the heads of some bird species. It is a stripe which runs from the base of the bird's beak above its eye, finishing somewhere towards the rear of the bird's head.Dunn and Alderfer (2006), p. 10 Also k ...

on an otherwise blackish brown face. Their crown and upperparts are smoky black or blackish brown. Their wings are blackish with a pale rufous band at the base of the flight feathers. Their tail is black; the outer three pairs of feathers have pale rufous or ashy-brown tips. Their throat and the sides of the neck are white, their upper breast smoky gray with small white or pale cinnamon dots, their lower breast smoky gray with light cinnamon streaks, and their belly plain smoky gray.Their iris is brown or dark brown, their bill blackish, sometimes with a gray base on the

mandible In jawed vertebrates, the mandible (from the Latin ''mandibula'', 'for chewing'), lower jaw, or jawbone is a bone that makes up the lowerand typically more mobilecomponent of the mouth (the upper jaw being known as the maxilla). The jawbone i ...

, and their legs and feet brownish gray to blackish. There is some hint that the species' plumage is clinal, with northern birds being somewhat paler than southern ones.Pantoja, V., F. Medrano, A. Vielma, T. S. Schulenberg, A. Jaramillo, and P. F. D. Boesman (2021). Seaside Cinclodes (''Cinclodes nigrofumosus''), version 2.0. In Birds of the World (T. S. Schulenberg and B. K. Keeney, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.seacin1.02 retrieved September 4, 2023

Distribution and habitat

The Chilean seaside cinclodes is found along the Chilean coast from the

Arica y Parinacota Region The Arica y Parinacota Region ( ) is one of Chile's 16 first order administrative divisions. It comprises two provinces, Arica Province, Arica and Parinacota Province, Parinacota. It borders Peru's Department of Tacna to the north, Bolivia's La ...

south to the

Los Ríos Region The Los Ríos Region (Spanish: ''Región de Los Ríos'', , ''Region of the Rivers'') is one of Chile's 16 regions, the country's first-order administrative divisions. Its capital is Valdivia. It began to operate as a region on October 2, 20 ...

, and on several nearshore islands. It inhabits the intertidal zone where it greatly favors rocks.

Behavior

Movement

The Chilean seaside cinclodes is a year-round resident throughout its range and is seldom far from the water's edge.

Feeding

The sister Chilean and Peruvian seaside cinclodes are the only passerines that forage at the ocean's surf line. The Chilean seaside cinclodes forages singly or in pairs in the intertidal zone and adjacent sandy areas. It feeds on aquatic invertebrates such as small crabs and other crustaceans, marine worms, small bivalves and snails, limpets, and insects, and also on small fish.

Breeding

The Chilean seaside cinclodes' breeding season extends at least from August to January and possibly beyond. Males make a courtship and territorial display from a high rock by opening their wings and singing. The species makes a messy nest of herbs, algae, and lichen in a cavity in rocks, in a burrow it digs in an earthen bank, in roofs or other human structures, and even in abandoned pipes. The clutch size is two to four eggs. The incubation period and time to fledging are not known. Both parents provision nestlings.

Vocalization

The song of the Chilean seaside cinclodes is a "bright trilled series of piping whistles" that pairs sometimes sing in duet. Its calls include a "short, sharp, slightly metallic ''chik''" that may be uttered in a series and a "repeated more subdued drier ''chuk''" made by an adult feeding young.

Status

The

IUCN The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. Founded in 1948, IUCN has become the global authority on the status ...

has assessed the Chilean seaside cinclodes as being of Least Concern. It has a fairly large range and an unknown population size that is believed to be stable. No immediate threats have been identified. It is considered locally fairly common but occurs in very few protected areas. Its habitat "could be altered by human activities at the coast line, such as constructions or other activities that alter the intertidal zone".