All species › Passerines › Tyrant flycatchers and allies › White-browed Chat-Tyrant
White-browed Chat-Tyrant | Ochthoeca leucophrys
Witbrauwtapuittiran | Pitajo cejiblanco | Chasco-tirano-de-sobrancelha-branca
The White-browed Chat-Tyrant is a grey chat-tyrant of dry valleys, scrub and ravines in the Andes of Peru and Bolivia. It perches upright and in the open on a shrub, rock or wall and makes short sallies after insects. Of the chat-tyrants of the guide area it is the one most at home in dry, open terrain and close to fields and villages.
Voice
A short, high whistle, roughly tsiew, also in rapid series, and dry, short calls.
Recording: Sjoerd Mayer — CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
14–15 cm, slender, with an upright posture and a fairly long tail. The upperparts are greyish brown to grey, with a long white supercilium; birds in northern Peru also have a white forehead. The wings are dark with two rufous to buff wing bars. The throat and breast are pale grey, and the belly is white. The tail is blackish. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
D'Orbigny's Chat-Tyrant Ochthoeca oenanthoides is browner, with a cinnamon lower belly, and usually lives higher. Piura Chat-Tyrant Ochthoeca piurae is smaller and darker brown and lives only on the western slope in the north. Brown-backed Chat-Tyrant Ochthoeca fumicolor has a warm brown back and cinnamon underparts and lives at the more humid treeline.
Habitat
Dry scrub, shrubby ravines, riparian growth, rocky slopes and stone walls around fields and villages, mostly between 2500 and 4000 m, locally lower on the western slope. It sallies after insects in the air or on the ground and returns to a perch; it lives alone or in pairs. The nest is a cup in a niche in a rock, wall or building.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
Peru: in the Andes from the north southwards, in the inter-Andean valleys and on the western slope. Bolivia: in the dry valleys and highlands from La Paz to Tarija. Absent from Colombia, Ecuador and the Galápagos. Outside the guide area in northern Chile and north-western Argentina.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Search in dry valleys along shrubby ravines, field edges and stone walls, for example around Cusco or in the Urubamba valley; the bird perches in the open and often returns to the same perch.
Conservation status
Least Concern. The species is widespread and tolerates small-scale farmland well.
Scientific name
Ochthoeca leucophrys | (d'Orbigny, ACVMD & de Lafresnaye, 1837)
D'Orbigny, ACVMD & de Lafresnaye described the species in 1837 as F[luvicola] leucophrys; 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'. Greek leukos, 'white', and ophrus, 'eyebrow', for the white supercilium. The specimen the first description was based on came from Sica Sica, La Paz, Bolivia.