All species › Passerines › Tyrant flycatchers and allies › Bolivian Tyrannulet
Bolivian Tyrannulet | Zimmerius bolivianus
Boliviaanse vliegenpikker | Mosquerito boliviano | Poiaeiro-boliviano
The Bolivian Tyrannulet is a uniformly olive tyrant flycatcher of Yungas montane forest in south-eastern Peru and Bolivia. It lacks the yellow face of its northern relatives and is marked mainly by its pale iris and its clear whistles from the treetops.
Voice
Clear, somewhat plaintive whistles, singly or in short series, and high, sharp calls.
Recording: Niels Krabbe — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
12 cm, with a short, dark bill and a rather long tail. The upperparts are olive-green, the head slightly greyer olive, without yellow on the face. The wing feathers have distinct yellow edges, without true wing bars. The iris is pale, straw-yellow to whitish. The throat and breast are greyish olive, the belly pale yellow. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
Red-billed Tyrannulet Zimmerius cinereicapilla lives lower and has a greyer crown and a reddish lower mandible. Peruvian Tyrannulet Zimmerius viridiflavus, further north, has a yellow face, a dark iris and yellower underparts. Tyrannulets of the genera Phyllomyias and Tyranniscus have distinct wing bars and a different head pattern.
Habitat
The canopy and edges of humid montane forest and cloud forest, also secondary forest and semi-open country with trees, roughly between 1000 and 2700 m. It eats small insects and many berries, especially of mistletoes, often in mixed flocks. The nest has been little described.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
Peru: on the east slope in the south-east, in Cuzco and Puno. Bolivia: in the Yungas of La Paz and Cochabamba and in western Santa Cruz. Absent from Colombia, Ecuador and the Galápagos. Does not occur outside the guide area.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Search in the Yungas of La Paz, for example along the old road to Coroico, or along the Manu road in Cuzco, in the crowns of forest edges and trees with mistletoes.
Conservation status
Least Concern. The species also occurs in secondary forest and along forest edges.
Scientific name
Zimmerius bolivianus | (d'Orbigny, ACVMD, 1840)
D'Orbigny, ACVMD described the species in 1840 as Muscicapara boliviana; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Zimmerius was introduced in 1977 by Traylor. The genus name honours the American ornithologist John Todd Zimmer (1889–1957), who did much work on the classification of Neotropical birds. The specific name refers to Bolivia, not necessarily the type locality. The specimen the first description was based on came from Yungas, Bolivia.