All species › Passerines › Tyrant flycatchers and allies › Yungas Tody-Tyrant
Yungas Tody-Tyrant | Hemitriccus spodiops
Grijsteugeltodietiran | Titirijí boliviano | Maria-dos-yungas
The Yungas Tody-Tyrant is a small, olive tyrant with greyish-buff lores and a pale iris. It is almost restricted to the Yungas of Bolivia and reaches Peru only in the extreme south-east.
Voice
The song is a harsh, rapid, descending rattle, sometimes level or rising; the call is a soft tuk or bink.
Recording: Dan Lane — CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
11 cm, with a flat, blackish bill and a short, bushy crest. The crown is dark olive-green, the lores greyish buff in an otherwise olive face. The back, rump, wings and tail are olive, with yellowish-olive tips to the coverts forming two indistinct wing bars. The underparts are greyish olive with faint whitish streaks, the belly plain yellowish white. The iris is pale yellow. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
Ochre-faced Tody-Flycatcher Poecilotriccus plumbeiceps has a grey crown, an ochre face, a dark iris and distinct buff wing bars. Scale-crested Pygmy Tyrant Lophotriccus pileatus has a rufous crest with dark scales. Black-throated Tody-Tyrant Hemitriccus granadensis has a black throat and white lores and lives higher up.
Habitat
Edges of humid montane forest in the Yungas, mature secondary growth along roads, landslide openings and bamboo, mainly between 800 and 1600 m, occasionally to 2450 m. It forages low to mid-height in dense vegetation for insects.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
Bolivia: most of the range, from western Santa Cruz west through Cochabamba and La Paz. Peru: only the extreme south-east, in eastern Puno in the upper Inambari watershed. Absent from Colombia, Ecuador and the Galápagos. Does not occur outside the guide area.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Listen along roads through the Yungas of La Paz and Cochabamba at 800–1600 m, near bamboo and young growth on old landslides, for the harsh, descending rattle.
Conservation status
Least Concern. The species is uncommon to locally common and occurs in the protected areas of the Yungas; the population is thought to be slowly declining, but no immediate threats are known.
Scientific name
Hemitriccus spodiops | (Berlepsch, 1901)
Berlepsch described the species in 1901 as Euscarthmus spodiops; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Hemitriccus was introduced in 1860 by Cabanis & Heine. The genus name comes from Greek hēmi-, 'half, small', and trikkos, an unidentified small bird, used by ornithologists for tyrant flycatchers. The species name comes from Greek spodios, 'ash-grey', and ōps, 'face', referring to the grey lores and cheeks. The specimen the first description was based on came from Songo, Yungas of La Paz, Bolivia.