The brown-winged schiffornis, or brown-winged mourner, (Schiffornis turdina) is a species of Neotropical bird in the family Tityridae, the tityras, becards, and allies. It is found in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia. Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela.
Taxonomy and systematics
The brown-winged schiffornis was originally described as Muscicapa turdina, erroneously placing it among the Old World flycatchers. For much of the twentieth century Schiffornis was placed in the manakin family Pipridae and its species were called manakins. Several early twenty-first century studies confirmed the placement of Schiffornis in Tityridae and taxonomic systems made the reassignment. In 1998 the American Ornithological Society was unsure where to place the genus and listed its members as incertae sedis but in 2011 moved them to Tityridae.
The brown-winged schiffornis' binomial Schiffornis turdina long applied to a species called the thrush-like manakin and later the thrush-like schiffornis. Since at least the late twentieth century taxonomists had suspected that several species were embedded within it. Studies published in 2007 and 2011 confirmed that Schiffornis turdina was polyphyletic. Following these studies taxonomists separated the northern schiffornis (S. veraepacis), russet-winged schiffornis (S. stenorhyncha), Guianan (or olivaceous) schiffornis (S. olivacea), and foothill schiffornis (S. aenea) from S. turdina, and gave the reduced species its current English name. The process began in 2012 and took at least until 2016 for the major taxonomic systems to implement. (BirdLife International's Handbook of the Birds of the World calls all of the five species "mourner" rather than "schiffornis".)
The splits left the brown-winged schiffornis with these five subspecies:
S. t. amazonum (Sclater, PL, 1861)
S. t. wallacii (Sclater, PL & Salvin, 1867)
S. t. steinbachi Todd, 1928
S. t. intermedia Pinto, 1954
S. t. turdina (Wied-Neuwied, 1831)
Description
The brown-winged schiffornis is 15.5 to 16.5 cm...
