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Black-capped Pygmy Tyrant | Myiornis atricapillus
Zwartkapdwergtiran | Mosqueta capirotada
At about 7 cm, the Black-capped Pygmy Tyrant is one of the smallest passerines in the world: a tiny tyrant flycatcher with a black cap, white spectacles and almost no tail. It lives in the middle and upper levels of humid lowland forest and is usually first noticed by its high, insect-like call. In the guide area it lives in Costa Rica and Panama.
Voice
High, thin, cricket-like tseek notes, singly or in short series; easily mistaken for an insect.
Recording: Juan Freile — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
7 cm, with a very short tail that makes the bird look almost round. Male with a black crown, female with a dark slate-grey crown. Lores and narrow eye-ring white, sides of head grey. Back bright olive-green. Wings blackish with yellow edges to the coverts and flight feathers. Throat and breast white, flanks and belly yellow. Bill short and narrow.
Confusion species
Black-headed Tody-Flycatcher Todirostrum nigriceps is larger, with a long, flat bill, an all-black head without white spectacles and a yellow breast. Slaty-headed Tody-Flycatcher Poecilotriccus sylvia has a grey head, a long bill and greyish-white underparts and lives low in dense thickets. Scale-crested Pygmy Tyrant Lophotriccus pileatus is larger, with a crest of rufous-tipped feathers and a streaked breast.
Habitat
Middle and upper levels and edges of humid lowland and foothill forest, also tall secondary forest and trees in clearings at the forest edge; mainly in the lowlands, locally into the foothills. It takes small insects with short sallies to leaves.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Caribbean slope of Costa Rica and Panama; in Panama also in the east on the Pacific side. Outside the guide area in north-western Colombia and north-western Ecuador.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Learn the high, cricket-like call and then search the foliage at the forest edge for a very small, tailless bird. The Caribbean lowlands of Costa Rica, such as at La Selva, and Pipeline Road (Camino del Oleoducto) in Panama are suitable places.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Fairly common in suitable forest, but easily overlooked because of its size and habits; declines where lowland forest disappears.
Scientific name
Myiornis atricapillus | (Lawrence, 1875)
Lawrence described the species in 1875 as Orchilus atricapillus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Myiornis was introduced in 1901 by Bertoni. Myiornis is Greek, from muia 'fly' and ornis 'bird': 'fly-bird', after the tiny size. atricapillus is Latin, from ater 'black' and capillus 'hair of the head', after the black cap. The specimen the first description was based on came from Angostura and Talamanca, Costa Rica.