Sooty Tyrannulet

serpophaga nigricans

Tyrannidae,Elaeninae · Tyrannulets

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

The account

Description

12 cm. A dark grayish tyrannulet. Above slaty grayish-brown with a light gray pre-ocular spot and a concealed coronal patch. Blackish wings with two dim light gray wing bars. Lighter gray below. Tail black.

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

Where it was recorded

The discs' own checklists select Sooty Tyrannulet at 7 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.

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

Call is 'wiit tit wiet tit', repeated.

Behavior

Forages in low scrub and bushes or near the ground by perch-gleaning, searching only those areas they can cover without sallying (⁷⁴). Moves around with hops and short flights to reach new perches.

Breeding

The nests of Serpophaga are open cups (⁸⁶).

Habitat and status

Rare in open or brushy areas adjacent to forest close to rivers and brooks. Sometimes on floating vegetation or on rocks in the middle of streams (⁴⁴) but not always found close to water.

Distribution

Throughout. To 1000 meters (⁴⁴). PE Jacupiranga, Serra do Mar, Serra Mantiqueira. Pinto reports the species from Cubatão between São Paulo and Santos; from Bananal at the border to Estado Rio de Janeiro and from Rio Mogi-Guassu in the center of the state.

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

Calls 3x. Cornell Cat#34017, São Francisco de Paula, Rio Grande do Sul, 10/22/84. Recording by T. A. Parker, III.

Recording files on the disc

13690.wav Calls 3x. Cornell Cat#34017, São Francisco de Paula, Rio Grande do Sul, 10/22/84. Recording by T. A. Parker, III.

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	serpophaga nigricans	Sooty Tyrannulet	Tyrannidae,Elaeninae
CLEMENTS	serpophaga nigricans	Sooty Tyrannulet	Tyrannidae,Elaeninae
AOU_HM	serpophaga nigricans	Sooty Tyrannulet	Tyrannidae,Elaeninae

Source details

Identifier on this site: seb_species_0199
Account identifier: seb_account_0199
Account number on the disc: 199
Source edition: CD03 / 2006 package
Original taxonomy scheme: WORLD
Structure status: heuristic; decoded_account_text and segment JSON remain authoritative