The Four Keys to ID
- Size & Shape
A slim, small songbird with an upright posture, a large head that often looks peaked, and a straight, fairly wide bill. The tail is moderately long.
Relative Size
Larger than a Ruby-crowned Kinglet and smaller than a Say’s Phoebe.
sparrow-sized or smallerMeasurements
- Both Sexes
- Length: 5.5-6.7 in (14-17 cm)
- Weight: 0.3-0.5 oz (8-13 g)
- Wingspan: 7.9-9.1 in (20-23 cm)
© Jonathan Irons / Macaulay Library
- Color Pattern
In fresh plumage, greenish brown above, pale below with lemon wash and olive-tinged or brownish breast. The wings and tail are dark with strongly contrasting pale wingbars. Worn birds can look brownish above and dingy pale gray below, with weak wingbars. Note the teardrop-shaped eyering, with the white extending to a point behind the eye.
© Liam Singh / Macaulay Library - Behavior
Flies out from perches at middle heights in trees and understory, usually capturing insects in flight just below the canopy. Nests in shady mountain ravines and canyons, often placing nests on shaded cliffs, stream banks, rotten stumps, or human-made structures rather than in trees.
© Paul van Els / Macaulay Library - Habitat
Nests in shady but partly open coniferous and mixed forests, usually near streams in ravines and canyons of foothills and mountains. Migrants stop in similar interior woodland settings. Winters in lowland and mountain forests of western Mexico.
© mark daly / Macaulay Library
Regional Differences
From 1989 to 2023 the Western Flycatcher was treated as two species, Pacific-slope Flycatcher and Cordilleran Flycatcher, and these are now treated as subspecies groups. The "Pacific-slope" group breeds mainly in coastal mountain ranges from southeastern Alaska to Baja California, while the "Cordilleran" group breeds primarily in the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Madre, from southwestern Canada to southern Mexico. These two groups are extremely difficult to distinguish from each other, even in their core ranges—the songs and calls of males are the best way to do so. Where the two groups come together across a broad area in southwestern Canada and the northwestern United States, it is impossible to tell them apart—the birds in this area are intergrades that do not show any consistent physical, vocal, or genetic differences.
