All species › Passerines › Tyrant flycatchers and allies › Slaty-backed Chat-Tyrant
Slaty-backed Chat-Tyrant | Ochthoeca cinnamomeiventris
Grijsrugtapuittiran | Pitajo dorsipizarroso | Papa-moscas-de-dorso-ardósia
The Slaty-backed Chat-Tyrant is a dark chat-tyrant that almost always lives along fast-flowing mountain streams in montane forest. With its slaty back, chestnut belly and short white supercilium it perches on stones and branches just above the water. Its high call carries above the noise of the stream.
Voice
A high, piercing, descending whistle, roughly tsiiiu, repeated at intervals, and a sharp tsit.
Recording: rudy gelis — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
13 cm, with a thin, black bill and an upright posture. The head and upperparts are blackish slate, with a short, narrow white supercilium that starts on the forehead. The throat and breast are dark slate, the belly and undertail coverts deep chestnut. The wings are plain dark. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
Maroon-belted Chat-Tyrant Ochthoeca thoracica has a chestnut breast band and a grey belly and lives south of the Marañón, in Peru and Bolivia. Black Phoebe Sayornis nigricans also perches by running water, but has a white belly and white edges to the wing feathers. Rufous-breasted Chat-Tyrant Ochthoeca rufipectoralis has a brown back, a broad white supercilium and a rufous breast band, and keeps more to forest edges.
Habitat
Fast-flowing streams and small rivers in humid montane forest and cloud forest, also ravines with dripping water and damp forest edges along roads, roughly between 1700 and 3200 m. It perches low on stones, branches and bankside vegetation and catches insects in short flights over the water and among the foliage. The nest is a cup of moss against a rock face or bank, often near water.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
Colombia: in all three Andean ranges. Ecuador: along both slopes of the Andes. Peru: in the north, north of the Marañón, in Piura, Cajamarca and Amazonas. Absent from Bolivia (where Maroon-belted Chat-Tyrant occurs) and the Galápagos. Outside the guide area in the mountains of Venezuela.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Walk along roads and trails where a mountain stream runs through cloud forest, and look for small dark birds on stones and overhanging branches; the high call is often the first sign.
Conservation status
Least Concern. The species depends on forest streams and disappears where riverside forest is cleared or streams are polluted, but it is widespread in the guide area.
Scientific name
Ochthoeca cinnamomeiventris | (de Lafresnaye, 1843)
De Lafresnaye described the species in 1843 as Muscicapa cinnamomeiventris; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Ochthoeca was introduced in 1847 by Cabanis. The genus name combines Greek okhthos, 'bank' or 'mound', with oikos, 'dwelling'. Latin cinnamomeus, 'cinnamon', and venter, 'belly', for the cinnamon belly. The specimen the first description was based on came from Bogotá, Colombia.