Flycatchers- ORDER: Passeriformes
- FAMILY: Tyrannidae
Basic Description
Of the dozen or more maddeningly similar species in the Empidonax genus, the cheery Acadian Flycatcher is the common one of mature forests of the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic U.S. They perch on slender branches at middle heights to sing explosive ker-chip! songs, or to fly out to catch insects. They are relatively strongly marked among Empidonax species, with rich olive-green plumage, a neat eyering, bold wingbars, and a hefty, partly orange bill. Their affinity for relatively undisturbed forest makes them useful as an indicator of forest health.
More ID InfoFind This Bird
The best way to find this forest-green bird is to listen for its short, emphatic pea soup! or ker-chip! call. Acadian Flycatchers are fairly common in mature deciduous forests, but can be difficult to spot as they sit, mostly motionless, on thin branches in the forest midstory. Once you’ve used the call to roughly approximate where the bird might be sitting, wait patiently for their inevitable swooping flight after a prey insect, and then follow it back to its perch.
Other Names
- Mosquero Verdoso (Spanish)
- Moucherolle vert (French)
- Cool Facts
- Acadian Flycatchers are such adept fliers that they sometimes take a bath not by wading into water but by diving at it, hitting the surface with its chest, and then returning to a perch to preen and shake.
- The oldest known Acadian Flycatcher was over 12 years old when it was recaptured and rereleased at a banding station in Louisiana.