Ruddy Foliage-gleaner

The ruddy foliage-gleaner is 17 to 21.5 cm (6.7 to 8.5 in) long, and most subspecies weigh between 39 and 52 g (1.4 and 1.8 oz). (Subspecies obscurus weighs 23 to 35 g (0.81 to 1.2 oz).) The sexes have the same plumage. Adults of the nominate subspecies C. r. rubiginosus have a dark reddish brown face with slightly paler lores, faint brighter markings on the ear coverts, and a ring of bare blue skin around the eye. Their crown is very dark brown with a reddish tone and slightly darker scallop markings. Their back is a slightly paler dark reddish brown than the crown, their rump a slightly paler dark brown than the back, and their uppertail coverts dark brown with reddish brown tips. Their wings and tail are also dark reddish brown. Their throat is dark rufous with rufescent brown feather tips and blends to the reddish brown breast that has faint paler spots along the feather shafts. Their belly is rufescent brown, their sides and flanks a darker brown, and their undertail coverts reddish brown. Their iris is dark brown to grayish brown, their maxilla black to gray, their mandible pinkish gray to dusky horn, and their legs and feet brown to grayish olive. Juveniles have a paler ochraceous throat and breast than adults. The other subspecies of the ruddy foliage-gleaner differ from the nominate and each other thus:

C. r. …

The ruddy foliage-gleaner has a highly disjunct distribution. Its subspecies are found thus:

C. r. guerrerensis: Guerrero and Oaxaca in southwestern Mexico C. r. rubiginosus: eastern Mexico from San Luis Potosí south to Oaxaca C. r. veraepacis: from Chiapas in southern Mexico south through Guatemala and Honduras into northern Nicaragua C. r. fumosus: extreme southwestern Costa Rica to Panama's Chiriquí Province C. r. saturatus: in Panama from Panamá Province through Darién Province into northwestern Colombia's Antioquia Department C. r. sasaimae: west slope of Colombia's Eastern Andes C. r. nigricauda: from western Colombia's Serranía del Baudó south through western Ecuador into northernmost Peru's Department of Tumbes C. r. venezuelanus: the tepui region where southern Venezuela and northwestern Brazil meet C. r. cinnamomeigula: southwestern Venezuela's Apure state and the eastern foothills of Colombia's Eastern Andes in Meta Department C. r. caquetae: from foothills of Colombia's Eastern Andes in Caquetá Department south into Ecuador's Sucumbíos Province C. r. brunnescens: eastern Andean foothills from Napo Province in Ecuador south into Peru's Amazonas Department C. r. watkinsi: from the Department of Loreto in northern Peru south into western Bolivia's La Paz Department C. r. …

The ruddy foliage-gleaner feeds on a variety of arthropods and also small vertebrates like frogs. It usually forages in pairs and rarely joins mixed-species feeding flocks. It mostly forages in the undergrowth though sometimes as high as the forest's mid-storey. It usually gleans its prey from dead leaves, pecks it from decaying branches, and sometimes flips around leaf litter on the ground.