Yellow-bellied Flycatcher

Overview

Yellow-bellied Flycatcher: Small flycatcher with olive-green upperparts, yellow underparts, and olive-green wash on breast. Spectacles are pale yellow. The wings are dark with two white bars. Feeds on a variety of insects and spiders. Weak fluttering flight with shallow rapid wing beats.

Range and Habitat

Yellow-bellied Flycatcher: Breeds from central Canada and Newfoundland south to Great Lakes region, northern New York, northern New England, and Maritime Provinces. Spends winters from Mexico to Panama.

INTERESTING FACTS

The Yellow-bellied Flycatcher was first described in 1843 by Spencer Fullerton Baird, an American ornithologist and ichthyologist.
It is the easiest of the eastern Empidonax flycatchers to identify.
It winters in semi-open habitats of Central America, including coffee plantations. Shade-grown coffee plantations have higher densities than sun-grown coffee plantations.
A group of flycatchers has many collective nouns, including an "outfield", "swatting", "zapper", and "zipper" of flycatchers.

The Yellow-bellied Flycatcher has a vast range reaching up to roughly 5.3 million square kilometers. This bird can be found throughout all of North America, as well as Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Saint Pierre and with vagrant populations in Cuba, Greenland and Jamaica as well. This bird appears in temperate, tropical and subtropical forests as well as plantations and many wetland areas such as rivers and streams, bogs, marshes, swamps and peatlands. The global population of this bird is estimated to be around 6.2 million individuals. Currently, it is not believed that the population trends for this species will soon approach the minimum levels that could suggest a potential decline in population. Due to this, population trends for the Yellow-bellied Flycatcher have a present evaluation level of Least Concern.