Tyrannine Woodcreeper

The tyrannine woodcreeper is rather larger and heavier than most others of its genus. It is 23 to 26.5 cm (9.1 to 10 in) long and weighs 40 to 64 g (1.4 to 2.3 oz). The sexes have the same plumage, though males average heavier than females. The nominate subspecies mostly warm brown, with a paler throat, faint buff streaks on its forecrown and behind the eye, and a rufescent cast to the wings and tail. Subspecies D. t. hellmayri is a more olive-brown than the nominate, and has less rufescent wings and tail. Both subspecies have a brown to bluish gray iris and gray to blackish legs and feet. Their large bill has a brownish gray to black maxilla and a brownish to bluish gray mandible.

The nominate subspecies of the tyrannine woodcreeper is found in Colombia's Western and Central Andes and south on both slopes of the Andes through Ecuador and Peru and slightly into Bolivia. D. t. hellmayri is found on the eastern slope of Colombia's Eastern Andes and in adjacent western Venezuela. The species inhabits humid temperate, subtropical, and tropical montane forest. It favors the interior of primary forest though it also occurs at the edges and in mature secondary forest. It only rarely occurs in clearings. In elevation it ranges between 1,800 and 2,300 m (5,900 and 7,500 ft) in Venezuela. In Colombia it mostly ranges between 1,500 and 3,000 m (4,900 and 9,800 ft) but occurs as low as 720 m (2,400 ft) in the southwest of the country. In Ecuador it ranges between 1,400 and 3,100 m (4,600 and 10,200 ft) but is most common between 1,800 and 2,700 m (5,900 and 8,900 ft). In central Peru it has been documented between 1,310 and 2,225 m (4,300 and 7,300 ft).

The tyrannine woodcreeper's diet has not been detailed but is assumed to be mostly insects. It usually forages singly though it does join mixed-species feeding flocks. It hitches itself up trunks and along branches from which it makes brief sallies to catch prey in the air; it seldom takes prey directly from the substrate. It seldom follows army ant swarms. It typically feeds fairly low in the forest, between 2 and 15 m (7 and 49 ft) above the ground.