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Acadian Flycatcher | Empidonax virescens
Beukenfeetiran | Mosquero verdoso
The Acadian Flycatcher is the largest and greenest of the Empidonax flycatchers of eastern North America. It migrates through eastern Mexico and Central America in spring and autumn and winters mainly in Costa Rica and Panama, in the lower storeys of humid forest. Outside the breeding season it is best identified by its call.
Voice
The call is a sharp, loud peek or wheep. The song, rarely heard in the guide area, is an explosive PEET-sa.
Recording: Mario Reyes Jr — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
14–15 cm. Upperparts bright olive-green, with a narrow whitish eye-ring. Wings dark with two distinct, yellowish-white to pale yellow wing bars and a long primary projection. Throat whitish, breast with a faint olive-green wash, belly white to pale yellow. Bill long and broad, the lower mandible entirely yellowish pink. Male and female are alike; young birds in autumn have yellower wing bars.
Confusion species
Yellow-bellied Flycatcher Empidonax flaviventris is smaller, with a shorter primary projection, a yellow throat and yellower underparts; its call is a rising chu-wee. Willow Flycatcher Empidonax traillii and Alder Flycatcher Empidonax alnorum are browner olive above, with a weaker eye-ring, and keep to scrub and open country. Least Flycatcher Empidonax minimus is smaller and greyer, with a small bill and a conspicuous eye-ring.
Habitat
Winters in the understorey and middle levels of humid lowland and foothill forest, also in mature secondary forest, forest edge and gallery forest. On migration also in other woodland and in gardens with trees. It catches insects from a shaded perch inside the forest.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Migrates through eastern Mexico (mainly the Gulf coast and the Yucatán Peninsula) and through Central America. Winters mainly in Costa Rica and Panama, more rarely further north in Central America. Outside the guide area it breeds in the eastern United States and also winters in north-western South America.
- Winter visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In winter fairly common in humid forest in Panama and Costa Rica; listen in the understorey for the sharp peek call, which is often noticed before the bird itself.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Fairly common; sensitive to forest fragmentation on both the breeding and the wintering grounds.
Scientific name
Empidonax virescens | (Vieillot, 1818)
Vieillot described the species in 1818 as Platyrhynchos virescens; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Empidonax was introduced in 1855 by Cabanis. Empidonax is Greek, from empis 'gnat' and anax 'master': 'gnat-king', after its insect hunting. virescens is Latin for 'greenish', after the olive-green upperparts. The specimen the first description was based on came from near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (USA).