White-plumed antbird

The white-plumed antbird is an insectivore that eats insects, arthropods and at times lizards. Like all obligate antbirds, they rely on army ants to flush out these prey from the leaf litter.[5][10]

While foraging, white-plumed antbirds may remain immobile for long periods of time so that they will not be attacked by larger antbirds or predators. In case of confrontation or alarm, they may "panic, flee and chip" instead. This reaction to danger involves the bird darting back and forth making chipping noises, spreading its tail and flicking rapidly to find their last prey items before fleeing. In reaction to human presence, the bird tends to make a chirring sound and mob the intruder.[5]

The courtship of white-plumed antbirds is essentially the same as in other antbirds.[5] Courtship involves the male feeding the female, mutual grooming and the male showing the female possible nest sites, a display known as "draping". Both the female and male help build the nest.[5] White-plumed antbirds typically build their bottom-supported cup nests atop live vegetation such as small palms, sedges and tuberous plants.[4][11] Although the plant chosen is alive, it will often have a mat of dead leaves at the crown. The nest is built sunken into these dead leaves to hide it from predators.[11][12] The nests themselves are composed of dark-coloured fibrous rootlets (inner lining) and dead leaves (outer layers).[12] Typically two eggs are laid per clutch.[11][12] The eggs have a rosy-white base colour with many longitudinal rosy-brown flecks and a few rosy hairline markings covering the surface.[12] After hatching, each fledgling is fed for about a month.[5][9] In certain locations, such as Manaus, they breed for much of the year and females are known to leave their mate (caring for their offspring) in order to start a new nest with a new mate as quickly as possible.[9]

This species has 11 different calls (described in detail by Willis (1981)[5]), 8 of which are similar to another species (the Bicolored Antbird) and 3 that are fairly unusual.[5] They have a loud, structurally complex and unique, whistling song.[4] This song is used between mates and young separated by vegetation and individuals searching for ants. An adult may also sing three or more short soft tweeting notes ("see-see-see") when searching for a young or a mate, followed by "beie, beie, beie" if they do not appear quickly.[5] Their other calls are typically quieter and shorter than those of other species of antbird. Several of their calls are used for agonistic behaviour and as predation warnings. There are two main calls with the latter function, one that is very high and thin because it is hard to locate the source of such sounds, and a kind of buzzing (aimed mostly at ground predators and humans) that mimics the lower warning growls of carnivores.[9]

The white-plumed antbird uses a complex basic moult strategy, meaning that the juvenile performs a preliminary moult before it moults into its characteristic adult feathers.[13] This first moult occurs soon after they begin to feed themselves. As adults, they perform at most one moult a year and plumage remains unchanging. A complete wing moult is quite variable, slow and irregular, especially in breeding birds. The moult takes approximately 301 days to complete, thus there can only be a single annual moult. Moults may not occur annually and can start at any time of year.[5][13]