Silky-flycatchers | Ptiliogonatidae

Zijdevliegenvangers | Capulineros

The plumage is soft and silky, the head carries a thin, upright crest and the eye is red. Insects are caught in a graceful, fluttering sally above the canopy, but for most of the year the family lives on small fruit. The desert species depends almost entirely on mistletoe berries: hundreds pass through in a day, swallowed whole, after which the skin is separated from the pulp in the stomach and the seed is voided within half an hour; it sticks to a branch and grows there into a new mistletoe, so the bird sows its own food plant. Unlike wandering berry-eaters, it holds a winter territory around a tree laden with mistletoe and defends it against other fruit-eating birds. The nest is a small, shallow cup in a fork of a branch, built mainly by the male. The call is a soft whistle that bends upward like a question; the song is thin and hesitant, with imitations worked into it.