The Chestnut-belted Gnateater (Conopophaga aurita) is a species of bird in the Conopophagidae family, the gnateaters. It is found in the Amazon Basin of northern Brazil, southern Colombia and eastern Peru and Ecuador; also the Guianan countries of Guyana, Suriname and eastern French Guiana. Its natural habitat is tropical moist lowland forests. It includes the taxa snethlageae and pallida of the south-eastern Amazon as subspecies. They are vocally and morphologically distinctive, and consequently sometimes considered a separate species, the Snethlage's Gnateater (Conopophaga snethlageae, with subspecies pallida).

Description

It is a small dark bird with a relatively stout bill, brown upperparts and crown (the latter often tinged rufous), a white supercilium, and pinkish-grey legs. The male has a black frontlet, face and throat, a rufous chest, and buff or white belly. The female has a rufous face, throat and chest, and a buff or white belly. Males of the subspecies snethlageae and pallida are distinctive, as the black of the face and throat extends well onto the central chest, with rufous of the underparts limitied to the edge of the black chest.

Distribution

Range: Guianas, Rio Negro to southern Amazon Basin

The range of the Chestnut-belted Gnateater is throughout the Amazon Basin, centered on the Amazon River. The following range limits are: it covers the entire downstream half of the regions in the south Basin and does not extend into Bolivia. The limits in the west are eastern and northeastern Peru with parts of northeast Ecuador and southern Colombia; the limit in this area in the west and northwest is the Rio Negro and the species is not found in the north central Amazon Basin of most of Brazil's Roraima state.

The range in the northeast Basin beyond the Amazon River outlet extends through Amapá state into the Guianas to the Atlantic coast, and the central and eastern Guiana Shield to include only eastern Guyana.