All species › Passerines › Tyrant flycatchers and allies › White-tailed Tyrannulet
White-tailed Tyrannulet | Mecocerculus poecilocercus
Witstaarttachuri | Tiranillo coliblanco | Alegrinho-de-cauda-branca
The White-tailed Tyrannulet is a small, active tyrant flycatcher of cloud forest in the northern Andes, which almost always moves through the canopy with mixed flocks. The white outer tail feathers are seen mainly from below. Its range lies almost entirely within the guide area.
Voice
A high, thin, slightly descending series of fine notes, psee-psee-psee-psee, and single high calls.
Recording: Juan Freile — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
11 cm, with a short, thin, dark bill. The crown is grey, with a white eyebrow and a dark eyestripe. The back is olive-green, the rump paler and yellower. The wings are dark, with two distinct buffy-yellow wing bars. The outer tail feathers are largely white, which is most obvious from below. The underparts are greyish white, with a yellowish wash on the belly. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
White-banded Tyrannulet Mecocerculus stictopterus is larger, with broad white wing bars and no white in the tail, and usually lives higher. White-throated Tyrannulet Mecocerculus leucophrys is larger, with an obvious white throat, a longer tail and brownish wing bars. Sulphur-bellied Tyrannulet Mecocerculus minor has a yellow belly and ochre wing bars. Plumbeous-crowned Tyrannulet Phyllomyias plumbeiceps is yellower below, with a dark ear patch and no white in the tail.
Habitat
Humid montane forest and cloud forest, mainly the canopy and edges, roughly between 1500 and 3000 m, mostly between 1800 and 2800 m. It gleans small insects from leaves and twigs in the upper levels, almost always in mixed flocks. 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
Colombia: in all three Andean ranges. Ecuador: on both slopes of the Andes. Peru: on the eastern slope of the Andes from Amazonas and San Martín south to Cusco, and locally on the western slope in the north, in Piura and Cajamarca. Absent from Bolivia and the Galápagos. Hardly occurs outside the guide area.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Search mixed flocks in cloud forest, for example at Río Blanco in Caldas, around Mindo and along the old Nono road in Ecuador. Look at the tail from below as the bird moves through the foliage: the white outer feathers then show.
Conservation status
Least Concern. The species is fairly common in suitable montane forest, but disappears where the forest is cleared.
Scientific name
Mecocerculus poecilocercus | (Sclater & Salvin, 1873)
Sclater & Salvin described the species in 1873 as Serpophaga poecilocerca; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Mecocerculus was introduced in 1862 by Sclater. The genus name comes from Greek mēkos, 'length', and kerkos, 'tail', with the Latin diminutive suffix -ulus: 'little long-tail'. The species name comes from Greek poikilos, 'variegated', and kerkos, 'tail', referring to the white in the tail. The specimen the first description was based on came from Puéllaro, Pichincha, Ecuador.