All species › Passerines › Tyrant flycatchers and allies › Panama Tyrannulet
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Panama Tyrannulet | Phylloscartes flavovirens
Panamese looftiran | Orejerito verdiamarillo
The Panama Tyrannulet is a small, green-and-yellow tyrant flycatcher of the canopy of humid forest that occurs only in Panama. It is inconspicuous and is usually seen with mixed flocks of insectivores high in the trees.
Voice
The voice is poorly described. High, thin calls have been reported.
Recording: Nunes D´Acosta — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
11 cm, with a fairly long tail and a small, slender dark bill. Upperparts olive-green. Lores and a narrow eye-ring yellowish. Wings dark with two yellowish wing-bars and yellow edges to the flight feathers. Underparts yellow, washed olive on the breast. Male and female are alike. It often perches horizontally, sometimes with the tail slightly cocked.
Confusion species
Yellow Tyrannulet Capsiempis flaveola has a brighter yellow head and underparts and lives lower, in scrub and forest edges. Yellow-crowned Tyrannulet Tyrannulus elatus has a greyer head with a dark crown, a short bill and a shorter tail. Greenish Elaenia Myiopagis viridicata is larger, with a greyer head and faint wing-bars. Yellow-olive Flatbill Tolmomyias sulphurescens is larger, with a grey crown and a broad, flat bill.
Habitat
Canopy and edges of humid lowland and foothill forest, also tall secondary forest. It searches actively among the leaves for small insects and often joins mixed flocks of other songbirds.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Endemic to Panama: in the lowlands on the Pacific side and around the Canal area, east to eastern Darién. It does not occur outside Panama.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
The Canal area, such as Soberanía National Park, offers the best chance. Watch for mixed flocks in the canopy; the species only draws attention when it moves among the leaves.
Conservation status
Not threatened according to the IUCN, but with a small range and rarely recorded in the field. Dependent on forest and therefore sensitive to deforestation.
Scientific name
Phylloscartes flavovirens | (Lawrence, 1862)
Lawrence described the species in 1862 as Leptopogon flavovirens; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Phylloscartes was introduced in 1860 by Cabanis & Heine. Phylloscartes is Greek, from phullon 'leaf' and skairō 'to skip, to dance', after its restless foraging among foliage. flavovirens is Latin, from flavus 'yellow' and virens 'green', after the yellowish-green plumage. The specimen the first description was based on came from along the Panama Railroad, Panama.