All species › Passerines › Tyrant flycatchers and allies › Grey-crowned Flatbill
Grey-crowned Flatbill | Tolmomyias poliocephalus
Grijskruinbreedbektiran | Picoplano cabecigrís | Bico-chato-de-cabeça-cinza
The Grey-crowned Flatbill is the smallest flatbill of the guide area, a bird of the canopy and forest edge of the Amazonian lowlands. It has a short, broad bill and a clearly grey crown. Its thin, rising whistles often come from tall trees.
Voice
A series of three to five thin, rising whistles, tuweet? tuweet? tuweet?, with a questioning tone; also a thin tsip.
Recording: JAYRSON ARAUJO DE OLIVEIRA — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
11–12 cm, with a relatively short, broad bill with a pale lower mandible. The crown and nape are grey, the rest of the upperparts olive-green. The lores and eye-ring are pale grey; the iris is usually pale, grey to whitish. The wings are dark, with two narrow yellow wing bars and yellow edges to the flight feathers. The throat is pale grey, the breast olive-yellow and the belly yellow. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
Yellow-olive Flatbill Tolmomyias sulphurescens is larger, with a longer bill and a less sharply defined grey crown, and lives more at forest edge and in drier forest. Yellow-margined Flatbill Tolmomyias assimilis is larger, with a dark iris and a pale patch on the primaries. Ochre-lored Flatbill Tolmomyias flaviventris has no grey crown and is yellower below.
Habitat
The canopy and upper storey of humid terra firme lowland forest, also várzea, forest edge, clearings with tall trees and old secondary forest, up to roughly 1000 m. It takes insects from leaves with short sallies, often with mixed flocks. The nest is a hanging pouch with an entrance tube at the bottom.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
Colombia: in the lowlands east of the Andes. Ecuador: in the eastern lowlands. Peru: throughout the Amazonian lowlands. Bolivia: in the northern and central lowlands. Absent from the Galápagos. Outside the guide area in Venezuela, the Guianas, Brazilian Amazonia and the Atlantic Forest.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In the Amazonian lowlands, listen for the rising, questioning whistles in the treetops, then look for a small green flycatcher with a grey crown; forest edge and clearings with tall trees give the best views.
Conservation status
Least Concern. The species is widespread and also tolerates forest edge and old secondary forest.
Scientific name
Tolmomyias poliocephalus | (Taczanowski, 1884)
Taczanowski described the species in 1884 as Rhynchocyclus poliocephalus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Tolmomyias was introduced in 1927 by Hellmayr. The genus name combines Greek tolma, 'courage, boldness', with New Latin myias, 'flycatcher'. The species name comes from Greek polios, 'grey', and kephalē, 'head', after the grey crown. The specimen the first description was based on came from Nauta, Loreto, Peru.