Giant Conebill - BirdForum Opus

Photo © by Sam Woods
Photographed: El Cajas NP, Ecuador, February 2010.

Oreomanes fraseri

Identification

Slaty-gray upperside, chestnut underside, and white cheek patch of variable size.

Juveniles have black stripes in the chestnut on breast and flanks.

South America: found in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and very northernmost Chile. According to Birdlife¹, the species has recently been recorded in Argentina.

This is a monotypic species^[2].

The genus Oreomanes was found to be embedded in genus Conirostrum and therefore, this species was moved to the second of these genera.

Polylepis, a red wood also called paper-trees.

Likes to be hitching along the trunks and on branches.

Little is known about their diet, but they do take spiders and arthropods, such as beetles and larvae.

Birdlife International species account read in October 2008
Clements, J. F., T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, S. M. Billerman, T. A. Fredericks, B. L. Sullivan, and C. L. Wood. 2019. The eBird/Clements Checklist of Birds of the World: v2019. Downloaded from http://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/
Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive (retrieved April 2014)

BirdForum Opus contributors. (2025) Giant Conebill. In: BirdForum, the forum for wild birds and birding. Retrieved 18 February 2025 from https://www.birdforum.net/opus/Giant_Conebill