All species › Passerines › Tyrant flycatchers and allies › Jelski's Black Tyrant
Jelski's Black Tyrant | Knipolegus signatus
Junínmoortiran | Viudita andina | Maria-preta-andina
Jelski's Black Tyrant is a dark black tyrant of the edges of cloud forest on the eastern slope of the Andes in northern and central Peru. It occurs only in Peru. For a long time it and Plumbeous Tyrant were treated as a single species; both are quiet birds of the forest edge.
Voice
Little known and rarely heard. A soft, short tsip; the male makes short display flights from a perch.
No recording with a suitable Creative Commons licence is available for this species yet.
Identification
15 cm, with a fairly long tail and a small, blue-grey bill. The male is entirely dark slate-grey to blackish, without white in the wing. The female is dark olive-grey above, with two faint pale wing bars, and greyer below with faint streaking on the throat and breast. Young birds resemble the female.
Confusion species
Plumbeous Tyrant Knipolegus cabanisi is very similar, but the male is paler, more leaden grey, and the female browner with more rufous in the rump and tail; it lives further south-east, in south-eastern Peru and Bolivia. White-winged Black Tyrant Knipolegus aterrimus has a white wing band and lives in dry scrub. Rufous-tailed Tyrant Knipolegus poecilurus is greyish brown, with much rufous in the tail.
Habitat
The edges and clearings of humid montane forest and cloud forest, scrub in clearings and slopes with young forest, roughly between 2000 and 3300 m. It often perches quietly on a sheltered branch at the forest edge and catches insects with short sallies. Little is known about the nest.
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 eastern slope of the Andes, from Amazonas and San Martín in the north south to Junín. Absent from Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and the Galápagos. Does not occur outside the guide area.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Search forest edges and shrubby clearings on the eastern slope in central Peru, for example in the valleys of Huánuco and Junín; look for a dark, quiet flycatcher that sits for long periods on a branch.
Conservation status
Least Concern. The range is limited, but the species tolerates forest edges and young forest.
Scientific name
Knipolegus signatus | (Taczanowski, 1875)
Taczanowski described the species in 1875 as Ochthodiaeta signatus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Knipolegus was introduced in 1826 by Boie. The genus name comes from Greek knips, 'insect', and legō, 'to pick', for its way of foraging. The species name comes from Latin signatus, 'marked'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Nancho, Cajamarca, Peru.