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Pied Water Tyrant | Fluvicola pica
Bonte watertiran | Viudita pía
The Pied Water Tyrant is a small black-and-white flycatcher of fresh water in northern South America. In Trinidad it is a familiar sight along ponds, marshes and ditches, where it searches for insects low in the waterside vegetation or on the ground at the water's edge. The southern Black-backed Water Tyrant Fluvicola albiventer was formerly treated as a subspecies of this species.
Voice
The song is a slightly buzzy choo-wer, repeated many times. Calls include a short, nasal dreéeap, mainly at dawn and dusk, and a soft pic.
Recording: Jaime Suárez — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
12.5–13.5 cm, compact, with a short, strongly hooked black bill and black legs. Head and underparts are white; hindcrown and nape are black. The back is mottled black and white, the scapulars and rump are white, the wings black with white edges and the black tail has a white tip. In the female the black of the upperparts is browner. Juveniles show the same pattern, but brown where adults are black.
Confusion species
The male White-headed Marsh Tyrant Arundinicola leucocephala has a white head but an entirely black body; the female is grey-brown with a white face, without a black-and-white back and wings. No other black-and-white bird of similar size occurs in Trinidad's marshes.
Habitat
Freshwater marshes, the edges of lakes, ponds and ditches, seasonally flooded savanna and rice fields, also pastures and gardens near water. It forages low in vegetation, on floating plants or on the ground at the water's edge. The nest is a round ball of dry grass and leaves with an entrance high on the side, often at the end of a branch over water.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Within the region a common resident in Trinidad; not established on Tobago. Single vagrant records are known from Grenada and Curaçao. Outside the region from eastern Panama through Colombia, Venezuela and the Guianas to northern Brazil.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In Trinidad almost anywhere in the lowlands along fresh water, for example at Nariva Swamp and the ponds of Orange Grove and Blue Waters. The black-and-white pattern and the low, active foraging make the bird recognisable even at a distance.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The species has a large range and also uses man-made waters such as rice fields, ponds and ditches.
Scientific name
Fluvicola pica | (Boddaert, 1783)
Boddaert described the species in 1783 as Muscicapa pica; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Fluvicola was introduced in 1827 by Swainson. Fluvicola is Latin, from fluvius 'river' and -cola 'dweller': 'river-dweller'. pica is Latin for 'magpie', after the black-and-white plumage. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cayenne, French Guiana.