Sapayoidae -Sapayoa

The Sapayoidae is a single species passerine family. The one species is the Sapayoa (sometimes called the Broad-billed Sapayoa) Sapayoa aenigma. It was considered to be a New World suboscine passerine, and is found in lowland rainforests in southern Central America and north-western South America. More recent research suggests that it is not a New World suboscine at all, but an Old World suboscine. It was shown (2004) that the Sapayoa is an outlier to the New World suboscines. In an earlier analysis based on nDNA myoglobin intron 2 and GAPDH intron 11 sequence data, the authors found the sapayoa to be “a deep branch in the group of broadbills and pittas of the Old World tropics.” Accordingly, the Sapayoa would be the last surviving New World species of a lineage that evolved in Australia-New Guinea when Gondwana was in the process of splitting apart. The Sapayoa’s ancestors are hypothesised to have reached South America via the Western Antarctica Peninsula.

The unified world list places it in linear sequence between the two broadbill families Eurylaomidae (Typical Broadbills) & Calytomenidae (Green & African Broadbills) and Pittidae (Pittas); broadly grouped with those three and the Philepittidae (Asities).

As the epithet aenigma implies, not only have its relationships long been elusive, but it is also easy to overlook in the field, because of its dull plumage and unobtrusive behavious. It appears to be common in a wide range and is not considered threatened by the IUCN. It has always been considered a monotypoic genus, but, as adumbrated it has more recently been given the status of being its own monotypic family, spit from the Broadbills.

Sapayoa Sapayoa aenigma ©Dubi Shapiro

It is a small, olive-coloured bird, somewhat paler below and with a yellowish throat. It generally resembles a bigger, longer-tailed, broader-billed female manakin. It is rare to uncommon in the humid forest understory, favouring ravines and small streams – generally in lowland, but up to 1200m in Colombia. It is usually seen in pairs or mixed-species flocks. It spends long periods perching, then sallies up to pick fruit or catch insects, on foliage or in mid-air, with its flat, wide bill in a way reminiscent of flatbills.

The birds build a nest suspended from a branch usually above a stream, anytime between March and September in the northern part of its range and between February and April in Colombia. It is a pear-shaped structure (similar to that of Broadbills) with the larger end at the top and fibres hanging beneath. The entrance is at the side towards the bottom. Its vocalisations are not well-known.

The Sapayoa is found from the Panama Canal Zone south through western Colombia into extreme northwestern Ecuador.