Earthcreeper in the Campos de Cultivo de Asia, Peru (1 Viewer)

[Xenospiza]

In the late afternoon of 29 July, we came across this earthcreeper in the Campos de Cultivo de Asia, on the Peruvian coast south of Lima (here).
With its long tail, plain reddish wings, long curved bill and strong supercilium it looks to me like a (somewhat dishevelled) White-throated Earthcreeper, but the issue is that it would be 2500 m too low for this species!
The most obvious confusion species would be Thick-billed Miner (common in the nearby Lomas), but this has bicoloured wings, a short tail and not such a clear facial pattern.
Ebird does not mention any similar species for this hotspot.

 

[THE_FERN]

Not the miner which has a straighter, less curved bill. Images suggest it's darker too.

I think this is a well-marked "plain-breasted" or "buff-breasted" earthcreeper (U. (v) jelskii). Your bird looks like this to me:

ML112600751 Buff-breasted Earthcreeper (Plain-breasted) Macaulay Library

Macaulay Library ML112600751; © Paul Silva; Arequipa, Peru

macaulaylibrary.org

...The ebird text suggests "buff-breasted" and white-throated are nearly indistinguishable except by song. Your bird has a thick, robust bill compared with images but I suspect there's individual variation.

 

[dwatsonbirder]

Interestingly there are two recent records of vagrant earthcreeper in Peru;

https://ebird.org/checklist/S80569384

https://twitter.com/x/status/1686396188579299328

I can't add anything to the identification discussion having never been to SA or seen any earthcreeper spp previously, but thought this may be of interest!

 

[THE_FERN]

Interestingly there are two recent records of vagrant earthcreeper in Peru;

https://ebird.org/checklist/S80569384

https://twitter.com/x/status/1686396188579299328

I can't add anything to the identification discussion having never been to SA or seen any earthcreeper spp previously, but thought this may be of interest!

It is interesting... I think these 2 are difficult to distinguish, but comparing photos we can see a more obvious white throat here. Supposedly that's a feature (although the ebird headline photos are near-indistinguishable imho)