Ruddy Foliage-gleaner

How to find it

Learn the call before you go, because the San Vito Bird Club says that is the best way to find it. Start early in the morning, since it can be found at the start of the Rio Java Trail at the Wilson Botanical Garden. Listen along forest edges, where it is usually calling as a flock moves along. Expect to need several outings, as one trip report records two hours on a main trail with several distant calls but no view. Birds in isolated forest patches along a farm track did not answer. If it sings as you leave, stop and wait.

How to recognise it

Across its whole range this is a medium-sized furnariid, 17 to 21.5 cm long, and most weigh 39 to 52 g. These details come from the species in general, not only from Costa Rica.

Look for these marks:

An even reddish chestnut plumage, a little paler underneath.

Orange tones on the throat.

A dark ear patch on a ruddy face.

A long, strong, greyish bill, stout and slightly downcurved.

A fairly long tail.

Another description gives dark chestnut brown above and olive-brown below, so the shade can look different in forest light. Some forms show a ring of bare blue skin around the eye.

What it sounds like

Recording: Tommy Andriollo, CC BY 4.0, source, read 4 Nov 2026.

Behaviour and diet

This is a secretive bird that tends to hide in thick undergrowth, so listening is the best way to detect it. Across its range it usually forages in pairs and rarely joins mixed flocks. It eats a range of arthropods and also small vertebrates such as frogs.

The San Vito Bird Club notes that it is usually calling as a flock moves along the forest edge. In the Andes it tends to stay in the understory and seems to favour the bottoms of ravines with dense growth.

Where it lives

Across its range it lives in dense understory and at the edges of humid tropical forest and foothill forest, and sometimes in lowland forest. It is found up to about 1800 m, and it is described as uncommon and local.

In Costa Rica it is limited to the far southwest, in the mountains near the Panama border. The forests around San Vito in the southern highlands are where it can be seen. A song was also recorded at Finca Cántaros in Puntarenas province, in the southwest of the country.

Similar birds

Buff-throated Foliage-gleaner is another Costa Rican foliage-gleaner. It has dull brown upperparts, buffy underparts, a rufous tail and a bold pale eye-ring. The Ruddy is evenly reddish chestnut with no obvious eye-ring.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

Costa Ricans call it Hojarrasquero Rojizo. Other Spanish names are used elsewhere, such as ticotico castaño, hojarasquero canela in Colombia and rascahojas rojiza in Panama and Ecuador.

Status and conservation

The Costa Rican bird list marks it as a resident (R), and the IUCN lists the species as Least Concern.

Photography tips

Photography is a matter of patience. Learn the call, since that is the best way to find it, and expect several outings. Two hours on one main trail gave distant calls but no view, so plan more than one early morning.