Collared Gnatwren

The collared gnatwren is approximately 11 cm (4.3 in) long and weighs 10 to 12 g (0.35 to 0.42 oz). The nominate subspecies is brown above and mostly creamy white below. Its head has a brown crown, white supercilium, cheek, and throat, and a thick black line through the eye. The underside has a wide black band across the chest and olive-brown flanks. The sexes are similar. The other subspecies differ in the intensity and in some cases the hue of the upperparts and flanks and the width of some facial markings.

The subspecies of the collared gnatwren are distributed thus:

M. c. paraguensis, eastern Venezuela M. c. collaris sensu stricto, southeastern Colombia, southern Venezuela, and northern Brazil M. c. torquatus, the Guianas and Brazil's Amapá state M. c. perlatus sensu stricto, south-southeastern Colombia, northeastern Peru, and northwestern Brazil M. c. colombianus, south-central Colombia and northeastern Ecuador The collared gnatwren generally inhabits the undergrowth of wet, humid, terra firme forest, usually near water and mostly below 500 m (1,600 ft) elevation. It seldom occurs in forest edges. In French Guiana and Suriname it occurs in primary rainforest.

The collared gnatwren's diet is almost exclusively small arthropods. It forages very near the ground picking prey from foliage and probing leaf litter. It often joins mixed-species foraging flocks and may follow army ant swarms.