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Mountain Elaenia | Elaenia frantzii
Bergelenia | Elenia montañera
The Mountain Elaenia is an olive-green elaenia of the highlands with a round head, no crest and no white crown patch. It is common at forest edges, in clearings and in pastures with trees in the mountains, and eats much fruit. In the guide area it lives from Guatemala to western Panama.
Voice
A plaintive, drawn-out peeeur and a short, hoarse chee-bee-yew; in the breeding season repeated from a lookout in a tree.
Recording: Marcela Morales sánchez — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
14–15 cm. Head round and smooth, olive-green, with a narrow pale eye-ring that makes the eye look large. Upperparts olive-green. Wings dark with two dull yellowish-white wing-bars and pale edges to the tertials. Throat and breast greyish olive, belly pale yellow. Bill fairly short, dark with a pale base to the lower mandible. Male and female are alike.
Confusion species
Yellow-bellied Elaenia Elaenia flavogaster has a full crest with a white crown patch and occurs mainly lower down. Lesser Elaenia Elaenia chiriquensis is greyer above, duller below and has a small white crown patch. Tyrannulets such as Guatemalan Tyrannulet Zimmerius vilissimus are much smaller, with a short bill.
Habitat
Forest edges, clearings, scrub, pastures with scattered trees, gardens and orchards in the mountains, also in cloud forest and pine-oak forest, mainly above about 1200 m. Outside the breeding season some birds occur lower down. It eats many small fruits and berries, including mistletoe, as well as insects.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
In the guide area in the highlands of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, and in Costa Rica and western Panama. Outside the guide area in the Andes of Colombia and in the mountains of northern Venezuela.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Common in the high mountains of Costa Rica, for example around San Gerardo de Dota, and in the Monteverde area. It often sits upright on a branch in a clearing or near fruiting shrubs.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Common in suitable mountain country; tolerates semi-open farmland with trees well.
Scientific name
Elaenia frantzii | Lawrence, 1865
Lawrence described the species in 1865 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Elaenia was introduced in 1836 by Sundevall. Elaenia comes from Greek elaineos 'oily, olive-coloured', after the olive-green plumage. frantzii honours the German physician and naturalist Alexander von Frantzius (1821–1877), who collected in Costa Rica. The specimen the first description was based on came from San José, Costa Rica.