Western woodhaunter

The western woodhaunter (Automolus virgatus) is a species of bird in the Furnariinae subfamily of the ovenbird family Furnariidae. It is found in Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama.

Taxonomy and systematics

At one time what is now the western woodhaunter was included in genus Hyloctistes but molecular phylogenetic studies showed that Hyloctistes is embedded within Automolus.

Even before the generic merger, the western woodhaunter's taxonomy was unsettled, and it remains so. Its four subspecies were included with two others in what was then called the striped woodhaunter (then H. subulatus, later A. subulatus). In the early twenty-first century several authors split the four Central American and western South American subspecies from the striped woodhaunter and named the new species the western woodhaunter (then H. virgatus, now A. virgatus). They gave the remaining two subspecies the English name eastern woodhaunter and by the principle of priority retained the binomial A. subulatus for it. By late 2023 the International Ornithological Committee, BirdLife International's Handbook of the Birds of the World (HBW), and the Clements taxonomy adopted the split, though HBW calls A. subulatus the Amazonian woodhaunter. The North and South American Classification Committees of the American Ornithological Society (AOS) have not adopted the split but both subcommittees note that some authors suggest it.

The four subspecies of the western woodhaunter are:

A. v.