Slaty Bristlefront

merulaxis ater

Rhinocryptidae · Tapaculos

Disc 2 · 2001 listed
Disc 3 · 2006 listed
Disc 1 · 2011 listed

The account

Description

18 cm. Both sexes have stiff bristle-like, erect plumes on the sides of the forehead. Iris dark brown.

Male is mostly bluish slate black with the lower back, rump and sides of the belly dark brown.

The female is brown above. Below cinnamon rufous, the sides of the belly brown.

The disc records this picture against the bird without a caption. Disc 3 · 2006

Where it was recorded

The discs' own checklists select Slaty Bristlefront at 13 localities.

Historical checklist localities on the disc's own area map — the red dots the original program drew, placed by its recovered projection. Not a range map: it shows the places whose checklists record the bird, nothing more. 1 has no usable coordinate and is listed below unplotted.

Boraceia BOSB
Fazenda Intervales FASB
Ilha São Sebastião SSSB
Jureia-Peruibe JUSB position not recoverable
Nucleo Sta. Virginia NUSP
Parati PARB
PE Jacupiranga PJSB
Reserva Ecológica Guapiacú RERB
Rio de Janeiro RIRB
Serra Bocaina SESB
Serra dos Tucanos SDTC
Sete Barras STSB
Ubatuba UBSB

How the map was made

The original program computed each red dot at display time from the locality's coordinates, using its map library and one of five base maps drawn for the screen widths of the day. That library's projection — an oblique rotation of the sphere about the map's own centre, 23.7°S 47.4°W — was read from the program and checked against the graticule the same program drew into the base maps: it reproduces every grid intersection to within about a pixel. The dots here use that projection on the 1280-pixel base map, with the coordinates the discs record. Nothing was placed by hand, no modern map data was used, and a place whose coordinate is incomplete, out of range or beyond the map's edge is listed rather than guessed.

The discs carried location maps only; none shows a distribution or range.

Voice

Song is a long sequence of melodical whistles about 4 per second, starting loud and high in pitch and becoming softer and lower in pitch, often going on for many seconds. Call is a repeated metallic 'tick'.

Behavior

Walks rail-like on the ground, usually staying well hidden in the vegetation.

Habitat and status

In humid lowland primary and secondary rain forest, humid dense scrub and old plantations. Quite common in the forests of the coastal area, but also found further inland, e. g. in the Serra Mantiqueira.

Distribution

Throughout. Sea level to 1300 meters in the Serra Mantiqueira.

Decoded from the disc's own bytes. Each part is shown under the heading the disc files it under, and the wording, spelling and punctuation are the author's.

Vocalizations

Song after playback. Rio Escuro near Ubatuba. Overgrown banana plantation, scrub. Some clouds, humid, 30°C. 11/11/93
Calls after playback. 11/11/93, Rio Escuro near Ubatuba. Second growth, scrub. Some clouds, humid, 30°C.
Calls. Ubatuba, 10/28/98, secondary dense rain forest, cloudy, 27°C
Song, Rio Escuro near Ubatuba. 11/11/93. Secondary forest. With Dysithamnus stictothorax, Automolus leucophthalmus.
Song. Rio Escuro, near Ubatuba, 11/22/98. Sunny, 20°C. Secondary forest. With Myiodynastes maculatus, Vireo olivaceus, Thraupis cyanoptera.
Call and song. Rio Escuro, near Ubatuba, 10/13/99. Sunny, 27°C. Secondary forest. With Vireo olivaceus, Hemitriccus furcatus.

Recording files on the disc

13583.mp3 Song after playback. Rio Escuro near Ubatuba. Overgrown banana plantation, scrub. Some clouds, humid, 30°C. 11/11/93
6712.mp3 Calls after playback. 11/11/93, Rio Escuro near Ubatuba. Second growth, scrub. Some clouds, humid, 30°C.
8617.wav Calls. Ubatuba, 10/28/98, secondary dense rain forest, cloudy, 27°C
12366.wav Song, Rio Escuro near Ubatuba. 11/11/93. Secondary forest. With Dysithamnus stictothorax, Automolus leucophthalmus.
15634.mp3 Song. Rio Escuro, near Ubatuba, 11/22/98. Sunny, 20°C. Secondary forest. With Myiodynastes maculatus, Vireo olivaceus, Thraupis cyanoptera.
10626.wav Call and song. Rio Escuro, near Ubatuba, 10/13/99. Sunny, 27°C. Secondary forest. With Vireo olivaceus, Hemitriccus furcatus.

Across the three discs

The work was published on three discs — Disc 2 in 2001, Disc 3 in 2006 and Disc 1 in 2011. Where they differ, that is a difference between historical releases, and it is never merged away. The 2011 disc is not treated as correcting the earlier ones.

Which discs list this bird

Disc 2 · 2001 — in this disc's bird list
Disc 3 · 2006 — in this disc's bird list
Disc 1 · 2011 — in this disc's bird list

How that was established

Disc 2 · 2001: aux_nonzero;local_checklist_byte45_flag_1
Disc 3 · 2006: aux_nonzero;local_checklist_byte45_flag_1
Disc 1 · 2011: aux_nonzero;local_checklist_byte45_flag_1

The disc's own record fields that place the bird on its list: a non-empty entry in the species table, and the byte that marks it as selected on a local checklist.

The account in the Disc 1 · 2011 revision

The 2011 Disc 1 revision carries this account text unchanged from the Disc 3 release.

The work's own taxonomy

The discs carried three parallel name schemes. All three are shown as recovered; none is a modern taxonomy and none has been updated.

Scheme	Scientific name	English name	Family
WORLD	merulaxis ater	Slaty Bristlefront	Rhinocryptidae
CLEMENTS	merulaxis ater	Slaty Bristlefront	Rhinocryptidae
AOU_HM	merulaxis ater	Slaty Bristlefront	Rhinocryptidae

Open questions about this bird

Recovered evidence that has not been settled. It is published because leaving it out would misrepresent what the discs contain.

Later listening, kept separate from the disc's own claims

content_100_441001 — review_identification: Merulaxis ater (human_review; definite)

content_441002_wav — historical_target: MERULAXIS ATER (historical_source)

Listening observation HRO_SCAN_0030

What was heard: Merulaxis ater

Relationship to the disc's evidence: no_historical_label

Identification certainty: definite · transcription certainty: clear · handwritten_original

Source details

Identifier on this site: seb_species_0159
Account identifier: seb_account_0159
Account number on the disc: 159
Source edition: CD03 / 2006 package
Original taxonomy scheme: WORLD
Structure status: heuristic; decoded_account_text and segment JSON remain authoritative