All species › Passerines › Tyrant flycatchers and allies › Tawny-rumped Tyrannulet
Tawny-rumped Tyrannulet | Tyranniscus uropygialis
Vaalstuitvliegenpikker | Tiranolete lomileonado | Piolhinho-de-uropígio-fulvo
The Tawny-rumped Tyrannulet is a small tyrannulet of semi-open montane woodland, scrub and forest edges in the Andes. It can be recognised by its tawny rump, which shows when the bird flies off. More often than related species it lives in drier and more open terrain.
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Voice
Short, high calls and a rapid series of squeaky notes.
No recording with a suitable Creative Commons licence is available for this species yet.
Identification
11 cm, with a short, black bill. The crown is dark brownish grey, with a white eyebrow and a grey cheek. The back is olive-brown, the rump and uppertail coverts tawny. The wings are dark, with two buffy to whitish wing bars. The throat is whitish, the breast grey and the belly pale yellow. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
White-throated Tyrannulet Mecocerculus leucophrys is larger and longer-tailed, with a white throat and a brown back, but lacks the tawny rump. Black-capped Tyrannulet Tyranniscus nigrocapillus has a black cap and yellow underparts. White-banded Tyrannulet Mecocerculus stictopterus has a grey crown, white wing bars and no tawny rump.
Habitat
Forest edges, semi-open montane woodland, scrub and groves, also in dry Andean valleys, roughly between 1800 and 3300 m. It searches for small insects among the leaves of shrubs and low trees, alone, in pairs or 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
Colombia: locally in the Andes. Ecuador: on both slopes and in the inter-Andean valleys. Peru: along the Andes. Bolivia: along the east slope of the Andes southwards. Absent from the Galápagos. Outside the guide area at most locally in adjacent parts of Venezuela and Argentina.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Search scrub and forest edges in the Andes, for example hedges and groves near fields, and look for the tawny rump when the bird flies off.
Conservation status
Least Concern. The species also lives in heavily modified terrain with scrub.
Scientific name
Tyranniscus uropygialis | (Lawrence, 1869)
Lawrence described the species in 1869 as Mecocerculus uropygialis; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Tyranniscus was introduced in 1860 by Cabanis & Heine. The genus name is a diminutive of Ancient Greek tyrannos, 'tyrant', so 'little tyrant'. The specific name comes from uropygium, 'rump' (Latin from Greek), after the distinctively coloured rump. The specimen the first description was based on came from Corazón, Pichincha, Ecuador.