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Lesser Antillean Pewee | Contopus latirostris
Roestbuikpiewie | Pibí de las Antillas Menores
The Lesser Antillean Pewee is a small, dark flycatcher with a warm-coloured belly, split between three separate island groups: Puerto Rico, the central Lesser Antilles and Saint Lucia. Some authors treat the Puerto Rico and Saint Lucia forms as separate species. On Guadeloupe its local names include gobe-mouches, loulou fou and tombé-levé.
Voice
An emphatic, trilled pree-e-e and a high, repeated peet-peet-peet-peet-peet.
Recording: Étienne Leroy — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
About 15 cm. Crown dark sooty brown, upperparts dark olive-brown, with a cinnamon tinge on Saint Lucia. Underparts warm rufous to ochre, the throat paler. Wing bars absent or very faint. Bill broad, with an orange-yellow lower mandible. The Puerto Rico subspecies blancoi is paler and duller below; brunneicapillus of Guadeloupe, Dominica and Martinique has an almost black crown and a paler, buffy throat. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
Caribbean Elaenia Elaenia martinica has white wing bars, a whitish belly and a small bill. Lesser Antillean Flycatcher Myiarchus oberi and, on Puerto Rico, Puerto Rican Flycatcher Myiarchus antillarum are larger, with a shaggier head and rufous in the wings and tail, and lack the uniform rufous underparts. Eastern Wood Pewee Contopus virens is a rare passage migrant with a greyish-white belly and clear wing bars.
Habitat
Moist and semi-evergreen forest, montane rainforest, wooded hills and coffee plantations; also dry scrubby woodland and coastal mangroves. From sea level to about 900 m. It perches low to mid-height in shade and sallies briefly for insects, often returning to the same branch. It breeds from March to June in an open cup of moss, lichen and plant material on a branch, laying two cream eggs spotted reddish brown.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Puerto Rico (blancoi), Guadeloupe, Dominica and Martinique (brunneicapillus) and Saint Lucia (latirostris). Absent from the islands in between; there are a few scattered reports from Saint Kitts.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Best in the forests of the interior, such as Maricao Forest on Puerto Rico and the rainforests of Dominica and Saint Lucia. The bird often sits still and low in shade; the call and short sallies from a fixed branch give it away.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The population has not been counted and is thought to be declining, but no immediate threats are known.
Scientific name
Contopus latirostris | (Verreaux, 1866)
Verreaux described the species in 1866 as Myiobius latirostris; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Contopus was introduced in 1855 by Cabanis. Contopus is Greek, from kontos 'pole, shaft' and pous 'foot', after the short legs. latirostris is Latin, from latus 'broad' and rostrum 'bill', after the broad bill. The specimen the first description was based on came from Saint Lucia.