Since 2004 · Licensed by the Costa Rican Tourism Board (ICT)

Gray-breasted Wood-Wren (Henicorhina leucophrys)
Photo: Dean Hester, CC BY 4.0, via iNaturalist
Gray-breasted Wood-Wren

Family Troglodytidae

Gray-breasted Wood-Wren

Henicorhina leucophrys

In Spanish: Soterré de Selva Pechigrís

  • Resident

A tiny, loud-voiced wren of the mountain understory.

The Gray-breasted Wood-Wren is a tiny wren, about 10 to 11.5 cm long, with a very big voice. In Costa Rica it lives in the mountains, in thick tangled growth where it is heard much more often than it is seen.

On a trip we build to the highlands, it is one of the typical forest birds on Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve mornings. Standing still and listening is the way in.

How to find it

Stand still and quiet when you hear it singing. The bird may appear briefly in the vegetation, clearing its throat with a rough chattering. It often stays hidden in dense growth, so sometimes it can only be heard. Cloud forest reserves such as Monteverde and Santa Elena are places where tour groups look for it.

How to recognise it

This is a small wren with a long pale gray eyebrow and a wide black stripe behind the eye. The cheeks are black streaked with pale gray, and the crown is dull black. The throat is pale gray, and the chest and belly are darker gray. The back, rump and tail are chestnut brown, and the tail has blackish bars. In Costa Rica the gray chest and streaked throat separate it from the lowland White-breasted Wood-Wren at every age.

What it sounds like

0:14

Recording: Rajan Rao, CC BY 4.0, source, read 4 Nov 2026.

Behaviour and diet

It forages alone or in small groups, from the ground up to about 2 m in vegetation. In Costa Rica it moves in pairs or family groups, searching for insects, spiders and snails among bromeliads, moss, fallen logs and low plants. It has also been seen following army ant swarms. It sings nearly year-round, all day and in any weather. Mated pairs sing duets so tightly fitted that they sound like one song.

Where it lives

It lives in humid montane forest, and in Costa Rica it stays in thick, tangled vegetation with vines. Its home is the low understory, including bamboo thickets, dense shrubby gullies and nearby secondary growth. It occurs from the upper treeline down to about 800 m on the Caribbean slope and about 1100 m on the Pacific slope. The Costa Rican form lives in the highlands of Costa Rica and western Panama.

Similar birds

The White-breasted Wood-Wren has a plain white throat and chest and lives in the lowlands, so where you are helps tell them apart. The Timberline Wren has white marks in the wings and lives only above about 2200 m. The Ochraceous Wren has a high, twittering voice, quite unlike this wood-wren's loud, musical song.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

The Costa Rican Spanish name is Soterré (or soterrey) de selva pechigrís. Other countries use different names, such as cucarachero pechigrís in Colombia and saltapared pecho gris in Mexico.

Status and conservation

It is a resident (R) on the AOCR list, and the IUCN rates it Least Concern.

Photography tips

It likes thick cover and is notoriously hard to see well there. Its habit of slipping through dense vegetation makes it a challenge for photographers, so patience and stillness help.

How we know this 20 sources, each read on the date shown
  1. Ecoregistros (Wikipedia text) read 2026-11-04https://www.ecoregistros.org/site_en/especie.php?id=4088
  2. El Jornal CR read 2026-11-04https://eljornalcr.com/el-soterre-de-la-selva/
  3. Wikipedia read 2026-11-04https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey-breasted_wood_wren
  4. Avibase read 2026-11-04https://avibase.bsc-eoc.org/species.jsp?avibaseid=57420691A32A007C
  5. xeno-canto read 2026-11-04https://www.xeno-canto.org/species/Henicorhina-leucophrys?language=fr&dir=1&order=xc&pg=23
  6. Cloudbridge Nature Reserve read 2026-11-04https://www.cloudbridge.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Bird-Species-List-Costa-Rica-13-April-2020.pdf
  7. Spanish Wikipedia read 2026-11-04https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henicorhina_leucosticta
  8. Naturalist Journeys read 2026-11-04https://www.naturalistjourneys.com/tours/2027/02/22/costa-rica-birding-across-the-continental-divide
  9. WINGS Birding Tours read 2026-11-04https://wingsbirds.com/tours/costa-rica-july/
  10. Field Guides Birding Tours (Costa Rica 2016) read 2026-11-04https://fieldguides.com/triplists/cos16.html
  11. Naturalist Journeys trip report read 2026-11-04https://www.naturalistjourneys.com/pdf/trip-reports/637-202203-costa_rica-monteverde-species_list.pdf
  12. Field Guides Birding Tours (Costa Rica 2024) read 2026-11-04https://fieldguides.com/triplists/cos24.html
  13. Wikipedia (Spanish) read 2026-11-04https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henicorhina_leucophrys
  14. Aves de Costa Rica read 2026-11-04https://www.avesdecostarica.com/Henicorhina-leucophrys.html
  15. Birds for Beer (Turrialba) read 2026-11-04https://birdsforbeer.com/2020/03/10/ochraceous-wren/
  16. Animalia.bio read 2026-11-04https://animalia.bio/grey-breasted-wood-wren
  17. 10,000 Birds read 2026-11-04https://www.10000birds.com/counting-birds-in-the-cloud-forests-of-coronado-costa-rica.htm
  18. Flickr (Costa Rica photo, Merlin-style description) read 2026-11-04https://www.flickr.com/photos/crunchie-carruthers/53901835256/
  19. BirdNote read 2026-11-04http://birdnote.org/podcasts/birdnote-daily/wood-wrens-tropical-duet
  20. ResearchGate (song divergence study) read 2026-11-04https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5407435_Habitat-dependent_song_divergence_at_subspecies_level_in_the_grey-breasted_wood-wren