Mazaria propinqua (Pelzeln, 1859)

Melo, Tomaz Nascimento de & Greeney, Harold F., 2019, Notes on the breeding biology of birds in riverine floodplains of western Amazonia, Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club 139 (1), pp. 56-64 : 58

WHITE-BELLIED SPINETAIL Mazaria propinqua

On 17 February 2011, HFG observed an adult spinetail carrying food to a nest at the Ecuadorian locality described above. Three days later, while examining the nest, a single fledgling flew from its entrance and disappeared into a nearby tangle of vegetation. On 24 February he collected the nest and made the following observations. The nest was an enclosed, globular mass of dry vegetative material, entered via a laterally oriented tube, and sited 60 cm above ground. It was supported from below by three nearly horizontal crisscrossed stalks of Gynerium cane and many smaller stems and leaf blades. Overall, the nest was 300 Although a photo on Wikiaves illustrates a nest, also found on an island in the Madeira in December ( R. S. Moreira; https://www.wikiaves.com.br/1561495), and two pairs were reported to be constructing nests on an island in the Branco River, northern Brazil, in mid October ( Naka et al. 2007), ours are the first descriptions of this species’ nest ( Schulenberg & Rosenberg 2016), which is similar to that of related species of Furnariidae ( Zyskowski & Prum 1999). The Ecuadorian nest fledged during the dry–wet season transition in that region ( Blake & Loiselle 2012). The active nests in July and December indicate that the species breeds both early and late in the wet season along the Madeira River.