All species › Passerines › Tyrant flycatchers and allies › Santa Marta Bush Tyrant
Santa Marta Bush Tyrant | Myiotheretes pernix
Santamartastruiktiran | Atrapamoscas de Santa Marta | Tirano-arbustivo-de-santa-marta
The Santa Marta Bush Tyrant is a medium-sized, dark brown flycatcher found only in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in northern Colombia. It lives at forest edges and in scrub on the higher slopes. Because of its small range and the loss of forest it is threatened.
Voice
A high, thin, whistled call, repeated at intervals; the song is poorly described.
Recording: Niels Krabbe — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
19–20 cm, with a black, fairly narrow bill. The upperparts are dark sooty brown, with a short white stripe above the lores. The throat is white with dark streaks, the breast dark brown, the belly cinnamon. The wings are dark; in flight cinnamon shows in the primaries and on the underwing. The tail is dark brown. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
Streak-throated Bush Tyrant Myiotheretes striaticollis is larger, with paler, plain brown upperparts, entirely cinnamon breast and belly and a cinnamon tail; it also lives in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, usually in more open terrain. Cinnamon Flycatcher Pyrrhomyias cinnamomeus is much smaller, with unstreaked cinnamon underparts and a cinnamon wing bar.
Habitat
Edges of humid montane forest, clearings with shrubs, young secondary forest and scrub on old clearings, roughly between 2100 and 2900 m, locally higher. It perches on a branch at the forest edge and sallies out for insects. Little is known about its breeding biology.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
Colombia: only in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, mainly on the north-western side around the San Lorenzo ridge. Absent from Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and the Galápagos. Does not occur outside the guide area.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Search along the road to the San Lorenzo ridge above Minca, near the El Dorado reserve, at forest edges and in scrub above about 2200 m.
Conservation status
Endangered. The species has a small range, and its habitat is degraded by deforestation, fires and farming on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.
Scientific name
Myiotheretes pernix | (Bangs, 1899)
Bangs described the species in 1899 as Ochthodiaeta pernix; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Myiotheretes was introduced in 1850 by Reichenbach. The genus name comes from Greek muia, 'fly', and thērētēs, 'hunter': a fly-hunter. Latin pernix, 'nimble, swift'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Macotama, Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia.