All species › Passerines › Tyrant flycatchers and allies › Eye-ringed Flatbill
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Eye-ringed Flatbill | Rhynchocyclus brevirostris
Brilbreedbektiran | Picoplano de anteojos
The Eye-ringed Flatbill is a stocky, olive-green tyrant flycatcher with a strikingly broad, flat bill and a distinct white eye-ring. It often perches motionless for long periods in the middle level of humid forest and is therefore easily overlooked. In the guide area it lives from eastern Mexico to Panama.
Voice
A high, thin, slightly rising whistle, tseeeeep, often repeated at long intervals.
Recording: Max Noack — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
15 cm, with a large head and a very broad, flat bill, black above and paler below. Head greyish-olive with a broad white eye-ring. Upperparts olive-green; the dark wings with narrow olive-yellow edges to the coverts and flight feathers. Throat and breast olive, belly yellowish. Male and female are alike.
Confusion species
Western Olivaceous Flatbill Rhynchocyclus aequinoctialis of eastern Panama has a less distinct eye-ring, more prominent yellow wing edgings and a faintly yellow-streaked breast. Yellow-olive Flatbill Tolmomyias sulphurescens is smaller, with a pale iris, a grey crown and distinct yellow wing-bars. Olive-striped Flycatcher Mionectes olivaceus has a slender bill and streaked underparts.
Habitat
Interior of humid evergreen forest, from the lowlands to lower montane forest, also mature secondary forest. It sits quietly in the middle level and takes insects with a short sally to the underside of leaves. It builds a pear-shaped hanging nest with a downward-pointing entrance tube, suspended from a thin branch.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Caribbean slope of eastern and southern Mexico, from south-eastern San Luis Potosí, through Central America to western Panama; on the Pacific slope in southern Mexico (Guerrero to Oaxaca) and locally farther south. Separately also in the mountains of Darién in eastern Panama. Outside the guide area only in extreme north-western Colombia.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In shady forest look for a motionless green bird with white spectacles; because of its quiet behaviour it is usually noticed only when it changes perch.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Fairly common in extensive forest, but dependent on closed forest and therefore sensitive to deforestation.
Scientific name
Rhynchocyclus brevirostris | (Cabanis, 1847)
Cabanis described the species in 1847 as C[yclorhynchus] brevirostris; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Rhynchocyclus was introduced in 1860 by Cabanis & Heine. Rhynchocyclus is Greek, from rhunkhos 'bill' and kuklos 'circle', after the very broad, rounded bill. brevirostris is Latin, from brevis 'short' and rostrum 'bill', after the short, broad bill. The specimen the first description was based on came from Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico.